


honey, we're breaking all the rules

by professortennant



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (Web Series), Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: Angst, Cape Cod, F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:40:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21542389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: It's always been them, right from the start. A love story told through a series of trips to Cape Cod.
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 77
Kudos: 237





	1. Cape Cod: PR Weekend

It’s not the scrutiny that comes with being in front of the camera that bothers her. She’s no stranger to being under the microscope, to having her work picked and torn apart. Between theHarvard admissions process, having her pastries evaluated by some of the greatest pastry chefs in France, and defending her thesis at McGill, Claire can stand up to pressure. 

But that had been her work—something tangibly right or wrong with the proof, counterpoints, and arguments to support or break it. 

Being on camera, though, feels less like the scrutiny is on her work and more that he scrutiny is on _her._ There’s more lipstick, eyeliner, and blush on her face now than there was the first time she’d tried applying makeup to herself, just twelve and sneaking compacts of powdery foundation and brightly colored eyeshadow palettes from her mother’s bathroom.

Like the amount of makeup she’s wearing (and, seriously, she doesn’t know why she isn’t allowed to style herself—shouldn’t she know best in at least this?), nothing about being on camera feels natural.

Adam had sent the first wave of on-camera talent from the Bon Appétit kitchen—she, Brad, and Carla—away for a long weekend retreat: a crash course in public persona, on-camera tips and tricks, and how to interact with the kitchen, camera, and at-home viewer simultaneously. 

Carla and Brad had both talent to the camera naturally, much to her envy. Carla managed to blend the perfect blend of subject authority and laid back, cool mom vibes as to be welcoming and engaging. Brad, too, had found his own style of charming chaos, opting to completely ignore the frustrated publicist trying to coach him from the sidelines and instead talking directly to the camera operator like the camera itself wasn’t there at all.

But Claire? Claire couldn’t get past trying to satisfy the checklist of tips and tricks: _Smile at the camera. Make sure there’s no dead air. Always be moving or talking. Throw in a great kitchen tip for your viewer. Explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. Tell a funny story. Be charming but not too silly._

As an inherent over-achiever and people pleaser, she was doing her best to hit all of the required elements, but she’d overthink, stumble, feel herself disassociating and falling away from the moment and failing. 

“That’s a wrap! Okay, guys, I think that’s pretty much it for the weekend. I’ll send feedback to Mr. Rapoport later in the week, but great job! I really think you’re going to do great.”

Claire glanced over at Brad and Carla and, to her delight, found them to be as exhausted and miserable-looking as she felt. They trudged out of the studio and back to their hotels with their heads hanging and their stomach full of nerves. 

No one felt ready for what was to come.

___________________

“You think if I tell Adam I can’t do the whole video thing, he’d let me quit?” Claire asked, swirling her wine glass in hand and looking between Carla and Brad pleadingly. “You guys picked it up so quick and I—“ She swallowed down the rest of her self-pity and her disappointment in herself.

She’d seen the test videos of her demos: her voice had been high-pitched and overly bright, nerves made her clumsier than normal, and trying to hit every talking point made her sound ditzy and scatterbrained. 

_Not_ her finest moment.

Brad nudged her beneath the table, stabbed an asparagus spear with his fork and waved it at her. “Hell no! And besides, don’t gotta worry about ole Rapo. No way in hell are we lettin’ you bail on us. We’re in this thing together, Saffitz.”

Carla nodded in agreement before leaning forward on her elbows, grinning. “If it makes you feel any better, I downed two glasses of wine at like, ten this morning, to get me through it. Nancy said I was a natural.” 

She winked as Claire’s mouth dropped open and Brad howled with laughter beside her. 

“Great! So we just gotta become alcoholics to get through this,” Claire huffed, shaking her head and grinning at her friends.

“We won’t let it come to that,” Carla said, patting Claire’s arm affectionately. She glanced at her watch and groaned, digging in her purse to pull out a few bills to toss on the table. “And with that piece of advice, my darlings, I need to his the road. Cosmo is going through this separation anxiety phase and I think my family will kill me if I don’t get home now. I’ll see you guys at work tomorrow?”

Claire and Brad nodded, waving their friend goodbye, making her promise to text them when she arrived back in the city safe and sound. 

Claire leaned over and plucked one of the last remaining fries off of Brad’s plate, popping it in her mouth and sticking her tongue out at him as he tried to bat her hand away. 

“Hey! Get your own!”

“Stolen fries taste better, though,” she counters with a grin.

“ _Thief,”_ he mutters. Still, he rotates his plate so the fries are closer to her, allowing her to steal at will. Beaming brightly, she steals another before leaning forward on her elbows, propping her chin in her hand.

“Seriously, Brad, what the hell are we going to do?”

He stares at her, eyes narrowed, thinking, waving a french fry in her direction. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. You listenin’, Claire, ‘cause this is very important.” He takes a deep breath, holds the moment, builds the anticipation, can’t stop the grin from twitching at the corner of his lips when Claire rolls her eyes and groans.

“ _Brad,”_ she chastises. “C’mon.”

He dips his fingers into his water glass and flicks thick water droplets at her face. She splutters and wipes at her face, glaring at him.

“Brad! What the hell?”

Brad laughs, dips his fingers, and flicks water at her again and she laughs this time, holding her napkin up in front of her like a shield. “First thing’s first, Saffitz. We gotta get you outta the makeup.”

She winces, looks up at him from eyes with caked on mascara and thick eyeliner. “That bad?”

He shrugs. “Not bad, not good. Just not _you.”_

Dipping the edge of her napkin into Carla’s abandoned water glass, she scrubs at her face and beneath her eyes. It’s not a perfect job, but it’ll at least let her skin breathe a little, make her feel a little more like herself.

Both of them wrinkle their nose and grimace at the amount of product on the used up napkin. 

“How do I look?” 

Brad surveys her and something warm settles beneath Claire’s ribcage. It’s not every day you get the pleasure of Brad Leone’s full attention. But when he gives it to you? Heart stopping. She licks her lips, can’t help it, as he trails his eyes over her face, takes his time just _looking_ at her.

The press of the toe of his boot against hers is felt all the more acutely and she finds herself content to be under scrutiny when it’s _him_ doing the scrutinizing.

Finally he smiles at her, teasing and casually affectionate. “Ya look like a raccoon, Saffitz.”

For the second time that night, her jaw drops, this time in faux outrage as she throws the used up napkin at his head. He easily ducks the projectile, still laughing, delighted with his own joke.

She sighs and steals another fry from his plate in retribution, but he doesn’t bat an eye. She supposes theft loses its impact when the victim _wants_ you to steal from them. 

“Well, I guess a raccoon is a step up from whatever I looked like for most of the weekend.”

And for all that she’s trying her best to stop the pity party, the remark is tinged with more than a little self-indulgent despair. She leans back in the booth, her foot still pressed to Brad’s beneath the table. It’s nice, though. The kind of grounding contact you need to stop yourself from falling too deep down a rabbit a hole.

“Shit, Brad. I just—I don't know what the hell I’m doing. I haven’t felt like myself all weekend.”

He tilts his head. “When _was_ the last time you felt like yourself?”

She thinks, furrows her brow as she tries to remember the last time she felt like Claire Saffitz. A memory takes her almost immediately to briny waters, sweet ice cream, sunshine, whistling wind, her family around her.

“There it is! Whatever you’re thinkin’ of right now, freeze frame it!”

Her eyes open—she doesn’t even remember closing them—and to her surprise, Brad is staring at her intensely, eyes bright and shining, a finger in her face. “What were you thinkin’ of?”

“Cape Cod,” she says wistfully. “My family has a house there and it’s right on the water and,” she sighs happily. “It’s probably my favorite place in the whole world.”

“And that’s where you’re most comfortable? Stress free? One hundred percent Claire Saffitz?”

She laughs, tucks her hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Great!” He claps his hands together, tosses a few bills to join Carla’s to cover the rest of their meal, and stands. She frowns at him, confused at the abrupt pivot the evening is taking. 

“Hey, Claire? Wanna go to Cape Cod?” He reaches a hand out to her to pull her from the booth. 

Instead of taking it, she stares at him like he’s a crazy person, like she can’t quite register what, exactly, he’s asking her to do. “I’m sorry. _What_?”

But Brad is bouncing on the balls of his feet now, renewed energy and purpose exuding from him. “Right now! You, me, that rental, and in a few hours, we’ll be in Cape Cod and you’ll be _you_ again. We need a reset button for ya, Claire. Back to square zero.”

“Square one,” she corrects without thinking, still trying to follow his insane Brad Leone logic, trying to process the fact that it’s eight o’clock at night in the outskirts of New York City on a Sunday night and he wants them to make the four hour drive to Cape Cod on a whim.

“Brad,” she says slowly. “We have _work_ tomorrow.”

“So we play hookey! Besides, didn’t the boss man say he wanted us to take the weekend to _really_ practice our on-camera personas. This is just part of that! A retreat extension!”

“Uh-huh,” she says skeptically.

“We’re just gonna take a _long_ , well-deserved weekend. He didn’t exactly specify the length of our weekend, Claire.” He wiggles the fingers on his outstretched hand. “C’mon, whattya say?”

Claire stares at him, his hand, tries to wrap her mind around what he’s proposing. But then she thinks of how unsettled she’s been this weekend—hell, these last few months—and how badly she misses clams fresh from the bay and the smell of her parents’ home and sitting in the backyard with a beer and seeing stars again.

“I mean, _technically,”_ she says with a mischievous grin, mind made up and excitement building at the prospect of being home in just a few short hours. “You’re my boss. So, if you said we _had_ to go to Cape Cod, I’d just be following directions.”

Brad beams, wiggles his fingers again more insistently. “Claire Saffitz, oh employee mine, you _have_ to go to Cape Cod right now.”

Slipping her hand into his and sliding into the truck beside him as they rumble out of New York and towards the coast is the easiest thing she’s done all weekend.

Even if she _does_ look like a raccoon doing it.

_________________________

The car ride from New York City to her family’s home in Cape Cod is mostly spent dozing softly against the cool glass of the truck’s passenger side window, punctuated by the robotic female voice of the GPS directing Brad to stay on the highway for a few hours and to exit here and there. At one point, she wakes up with Brad’s jacket draped over her like a blanket and she sighs softly, pulls it tight up under her chin, and drifts right back to sleep.

She’s going _home._

With _Brad._

New York is her home now, full of bustling energy and endless opportunities—those opportunities growing by the day (as evidenced by their disastrous publicity training this weekend). But she’d forgotten how much she loved the quiet, slow pace of Cape Cod and the way you could just _breathe_ —no buildings impeding the horizon, no light drowning out the stars, no sirens and noise drowning out the lapping of the water against the shore. 

Between bouts of sleep, she listens to Brad humming along to the radio, tapping his fingers along the steering wheel, slurping at giant iced tea he’d picked up on the way to keep him awake and alert.

A wave of affection and gratitude for him—pure and bright and so, _so_ warm—fills her as she drifts back to sleep, content in the knowledge that Brad is there and taking care of her. 

That Brad is taking her home. 

_________________________

Two hours later, she feels Brad’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently away. “Claire,” he whispers, voice rising as she doesn’t respond. “ _Claire.”_

She jerks awake, blinks sleepily at him, before realizing that the truck isn’t moving. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she looks over at him, still shaking off the remnants of sleep. 

“Welcome to Casa de Saffitz.”

Sleep disappears, excitement and _longing_ spiking her heart rate, as she hastily pushes his jacket off of her and slides out of the cab of the truck, stepping into the front yard of her family’s home, sandals slipping off and bare feet sliding into the squishy, verdurous grass, head tilted back with a sigh, taking in the view. It smells like home and the lighthouse sign on the front porch with _Saffitz_ etched into the wood, the line of trees to the right that she used to hide in when she wanted somewhere quiet to read—it’s all _home._

“Claire.”

Brad stands behind her, hand hovering at the small of her back to guide her inside. It’s almost half-past midnight and he looks dead on his feet, the four hour drive and day of publicity training taking his toll. She feels the exhaustion, too, but she doesn’t want to waste a minute of the time they have here. In a few days, they’ll be back in the city and their lives will be on camera for the Internet to see. 

For now, she wants this moment. Just little while longer.

She wraps her fingers around his wrist, stops him from moving. 

“Wait,” she whispers. “Look.”

They stand there, together, exhausted and stare up at the stars. She leans back against him and he has no choice at all but to slide his arm around her waist, anchor her against him. 

“I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid,” he tells her, voice low and by her ear. 

“How come you didn’t?”

He blinks down at her in surprise and she tilts her head up at his non-answer. Brad thinks Claire Saffitz may be the only person on earth who believes he could be an astronaut just as easily as he could make a perfectly mid-rare sous vide steak or a towering croquembouche. Her faith in him and his abilities floors him sometimes, a reminder that she sees _him._

__

__

Brad squeezes her hip affectionately. “Gotta be able to at least spell astronaut before they put ya in a rocket, Claire,” he reminds her.

__

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She bites her lip, blushing. “Oh. Well, NASA doesn’t know what they’re missing.” 

__

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He watches her eyes flutter closed, watches her inhale sharply and let the breath out slow and steady in a perfectly contented sigh. Her shoulders sag, the little lines around her mouth and eyes ease, and she leans back more heavily against him. 

__

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“C’mon, Saffitz, let’s get you to bed before you make me carry you in, too.”

__

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When he moves towards the porch, already thinking about a soft, comfy bed, once again her hand stops him. But this time, before he can roll his eyes exasperatedly and make good on his promise to drag her inside, he finds himself with an armful of Claire, warm and sleepy and needy and completely wrapped around him.

__

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He doesn’t hesitate, wraps her up in his arms, and holds her close as she nuzzles softly against his chest, shuffling impossibly closer and tightening her grip around his waist. 

__

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“Thank you,” she murmurs, her voice muffled against his chest. “I—I needed this.”

__

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Brad kisses the top of her head—it’s past midnight, isn’t there a rule about head kisses being allowed after midnight?—and squeezes her, fights the urge to pick her up in his arms anyway. 

__

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“Any time,” he responds, telling his inner poet to take a fuckin’ hike as he starts to compare her to the stars. Midnight head kiss rules or no, Brad’s pretty sure there are sanctioned Bon Appétit rules about bosses driving their employees four hours across state lines to make them happy. 

__

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Brad’s always been pretty good at breaking the rules though.

__

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He presses another kiss to her head and steps back, shoves his hands into his pockets so he doesn’t do something monumentally stupid like slip his hands into her hair and lift her mouth to his.

__

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They disappear into the dark, cool quiet of the Saffitz summer home and shut out the rest of the world for one more day. 

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_________________________

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When Claire wakes up the following morning, she takes a moment to luxuriate in the sunlight streaming across her bed. The stress of the on-camera persona training feels a lifetime away already, the stress evaporated by the fresh air of the bay and Brad’s attentive care. 

__

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The clock on the bedside blinks a bright and early eight o’clock and she groans, throws an arm of her eyes. She really, _really_ hates mornings. 

__

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But the sound of a pan clanking loudly and music playing softly and Brad’s loud, booming New Jersey-accented voice filters up through the house and she can’t help the grin that chases away any potential irritation at being awake before nine. 

__

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It’s a quick splash of water on her face and a fluffy robe around her shoulders later before she’s joining him in the kitchen. It should feel stranger, she thinks, to have Brad Leone in her kitchen. But he takes up every inch of available space like he’s always been there, moves effortlessly between the fridge, pantry, and cabinets as he cooks them breakfast. 

__

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He’s on the phone, the device cradled between his ear and shoulder as he tries to juggle the bread frying in leftover bacon fat and softly scrambling eggs in the pan over low heat and a criminal amount of butter. 

__

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Wordlessly, she takes the rubber spatula from him and takes over egg duties. He winks at her and turns his attention back to the person on the other end of the phone call. 

__

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“Rapo, Rapo, Rapo! Look, it wasn’t our fault! We left late and then we punched in the wrong address on the ole GPS, you know I’m fuckin’ useless with that shit. Give me a compass any day, y’know. _Never_ woulda been in this situation if I’d had a comp—Well, no, we did not in fact notice we drove across state lines. We were busy, uh, recappin’ our very informative and very important publicity retreat you sent us on, boss.”

__

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Claire hides a laugh into the collar of her robe and Brad nudges her shoulder, holds a finger to his lips and smiles. 

__

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“I hear ya, man, I hear ya. Dock us time off, if ya gotta, we understand. But we’re headin’ back home tonight and we’ll be back tomorrow bright and early! Well, I’ll be there bright and early. Don’t know about Claire— _Ow!”_

__

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The extra, still-cold stick of butter hits him in the chest and falls to the floor and he looks up to find her with her hand on her hip and a playful glare in place. 

__

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“Man, I gotta go, we got flyin’ dairy happenin’ over here. No, no, I’ll explain later. It’s a Claire thing. Toodles!”

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He punches the red _end_ button on the phone before leaning down and picking up the projectile butter, waving it at her. “This how you treat your guests? See if I ever come back here. Gonna leave a Yelp review for Casa de Saffitz: Very poor service, cranky fry cook.”

__

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Claire decides that, as charming as he is, it’s much too early and she certainly doesn’t have enough caffeine in her bloodstream to deal with a fully recharged Brad Leone.

__

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Instead, she pushes the plate of crisp bread, soft eggs, and bacon towards him, already putting the kettle on for him and rummaging around the back of the pantry for tea bags. One of the first things she’d learned about him was his aversion to coffee (and understandably so, she had thought, unable to imagine a hyper caffeinated Brad). 

__

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“Eat up and then I’ll show you how we treat our guests around here,” she promises, flicking the burner on and getting the kettle whistling. 

__

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Brad stabbed a forkful of eggs happily. “Now we’re talking.”

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_________________________

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The thing about going out on the town with Brad is that nothing is ever as simple as you think it’s going to be. Walking up and down the little antique shops takes them _hours_ as Brad stops and makes conversation with every shop owner, gets the full history of the inlet from the residents who have lived there their whole lives, promises to come back soon and take Mrs. May up on her invite to their weekly Spades game. 

__

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It’s relaxing, in its own way, to just sit back and let Brad do the heavy lifting of social interaction. She gets to hang back and explore the nooks and crannies of each shop, drift her fingers over the spines of leather-bound books, and wait for Brad to come find her in the back of the store to fill her in on the town’s latest gossip and Mr. O’Neill’s suggestion they skip shopping for the rest of the day and go to the new clam shack that opened on the shoreline. 

__

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Forty minutes later, arms laden with lobster rolls, fried clams, and a container of chowder and freshly baked bread (Brad had to drag Claire away from the counter as she pressed the young baker for information on proofing techniques and flour preferences), Brad and Claire kick their shoes off, roll up the bottom of their pants, and dangle their feet into the cool, refreshing bay water, passing the styrofoam containers of salty, briny seafood. 

__

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“God,” Claire groans around her mouthful of buttery lobster roll. “I forgot how good it can be down here.”

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Brad echoes her appreciation, mumbling through his own mouthful of hot, creamy chowder. “Christ, Claire. Okay, new plan: We just move here. Tell your mom I’m part of the family now, we’ll, y’know, commute four hours to work—“ He makes himself laugh in the middle of his fantasy plan at the idea of a four hour commute. She shakes her head, kicks her feet in the water, and tosses an Oyster cracker into his chowder.

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“Yeah? You’re just movin’ in?”

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It feels dangerously close to flirting—sitting in the warm sunshine, their bare feet brushing beneath the water’s surface, talking about the future, casually throwing out _we_ and _us._

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She’s worked hard to squish the parts of her attracted to Brad Leone into an airtight, locked, and sealed box. He’s her _boss._ And more importantly, her friend. She doesn’t have many good friends like Brad Leone, the kind of friend who drives you home because you’re stressed and because you just need a little taste of home. 

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Brad bumps her shoulder with his, reaches with his spoon to scoop up some of the seasoned fried clams. “Figure movin’ in is the least you can do to repay me for, y’know, savin’ you from your own brain or whatever.”

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She ducks her head, watches the light refract through the water’s surface and dance over her pale feet. “Seriously, Brad,” she says, voice going soft and serious, barely heard above the squawking of the seagulls overhead. “ _Thank you._ I was spiraling into my head at that retreat.”

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His toes brush over the top of her foot and she turns her head to meet his gaze, thoughtful and attentive. “Ain’t gotta thank me for shit, Claire. That’s what friends do. You just gotta trust me though. Rapo knows what he’s doin’. He sees somethin’ in you—somethin’ big. And we see it, too. Star power is your middle name.”

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“It’s not. It’s—“

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“The point is,” he continues, ignoring her attempts to derail him. “The point is you just gotta get in front of the camera and be _you._ That’s it, Claire. Screw Nancy and her tips to be a perfect goddamn Food Network robot.”

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“But I don’t know _how,”_ she despairs, the edge of whining painting her words. Brad makes it sound so easy, like he hasn’t fully considered the fact that she’ll probably be ripped to shreds by strangers with a Wi-Fi connection and an opinion, that she gets stressed so easily and it’s _not_ meant to be on camera.

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But Brad shrugs, hands her his chowder as he takes her lobster roll from her, taking a gigantic bite from the sandwich. “Pretend you’re talkin’ to me,” he advises. “When you’re making, I don’t know, fuckin’ birthday cake or somethin’, just pretend you’re trying to convince me cake is the best food on the planet.”

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“It _is_ the best food on the planet,” she insists, perking up at the mention of cake. 

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“There ya go! More of that! I’ll stick around for your shoots, hide out behind the camera, maybe make Kev one of those creepy mask things of my face so you don’t get freaked.”

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She stirs in another packet of hot sauce into the chowder and takes a hearty bite, warmed by his words and his promises to not leave her behind, to not leave her straggling and struggling. 

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“We’re in this together, right?” she says softly. “Because I don’t know if I can do this with you, Brad. You’re like—“ She blushes but continues because when something is true, you should say it. “You’re one of my best friends. I need you.”

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Her heart feels jittery and fluttery in her chest, like she’s had too many iced coffees, and her stomach feels suspiciously high in her throat, like she’s said something she shouldn’t have. 

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But Brad is looking at her intently, eyes never once leaving hers. He wraps up his lobster roll, wipes his hands on the front of his shirt which makes her wrinkle her nose and sigh his name exasperatedly. He ignores her, though, and instead offers her his pinky finger.

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“You got me, Claire. We’re doing this thing together,” he echoes. “Pinky promise.”

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Her pinky is wrapped around his before she can think to do anything else. 

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“Deal.”

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_________________________

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A month later, the first analytics—view counts, comments, Tweets and social media shares, all of it—roll in. _Gourmet Makes_ and _It’s Alive_ pull in a cool few million views. Claire has to sit down, shocked at the number. Brad whoops and hollers, slaps his palm on his thigh, and crows that he knew it all along. 

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He texts her that night, after the shock has worn off, after it sinks in that they’re climbing the hill of a roller coaster that they can’t see the end of, all building potential energy ready to explode. 

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_Together Saffitz! U and me! One vid down, like, 1000000 to go!_

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She grins at the hearts, cowboy, and peace sign emojis he adds to the end of his text. It takes her all of five minutes to carefully evaluate her emoji options before she settles on the hand that most looks like the gesture she’s after.

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The little hand emoji is accompanied by a smiley face and a single message:

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_Pinky promise._

__


	2. Cape Cod: Thanksgiving Part 1

It’s been five months and five episodes of _Gourmet Makes_ and she’s got at _least_ five new gray hairs just to round things out. But it turns out the fears she had about coming off poorly on camera were ill-founded. Because there are millions—god she can’t wrap her head around _millions—_ of people who tune in every month or two to watch her painstakingly pipe cereal dough or use a needle to meticulously pipe homemade gushers.

(“What I’d tell ya, Claire! I knew the people would love you. When you gonna start listenin’ to your old pal, Brad, huh?”

“Well, certainly not now.”)

Brad being right or wrong side (and she really, _really_ hates it when Brad is right), she’s going to have to talk to _someone_ in the upper offices about the tasks they’re giving her before she goes completely gray. But it also feels good and she walks away each day from the test kitchen exhausted, but feeling accomplished. The extra money tacked onto the end of her paycheck from the video revenue doesn’t hurt, either. 

But she’s blessed with a small break with Thanksgiving looming over the city, November covering the city with a brisk breeze, changing leaves, and the smell of cinnamon and clove wafting out of every bakery and coffeeshop in the city.

“Well, well, well, look what the turkey dragged in,” Brad teases, popping his head out of the walk-in as she breezes into the kitchen clutching an iced coffee (she refuses to stop drinking iced coffee just because the temperature drops) and one of the aforementioned spiced muffins. 

“That doesn’t even make sense,” she calls over her shoulder as she heads for her cupboard to store her bag and coat. “Besides, I’m on time.”

_Mostly_ , she adds in her head. 

Brad follows her to her station, leans down next to her with his forearms on the counter. His cheeks are pink from being in the walk-in and she knows he just got in the last produce order for the kitchen before they close offices for the next few days. 

“Is that how you talk to your boss when he’s tryin’ to reprimand ya?”

She grins, takes a sip of her iced coffee, and leans on the counter as well. “Oh yeah? Is that what you’re trying to do? Well,” she stands back up, cocks her head to the side and puts her hand on her hip. “I’m ready to be written up.”

They’re both grinning. She knows he’s never disciplined anyone on staff and he certainly would never discipline _her._ Instead, Brad leans down and rummages around in Claire’s cupboard, ignoring her protests, and takes the freshly baked pumpkin cinnamon muffin out of the white paper bag.

“Oh Brad, c’mon, _no._ You don’t even like muffins!”

He shrugs, still grinning, and breaks off a massive piece of her muffin with his giant hands, and pops the baked good into his mouth. “Let that be a lesson to you, Saffitz. On time is on time! Even if it’s the day before Thanksgiving.” 

He hands her the bag with the mauled muffin in it and taps the countertop, still grinning through his mouthful of _her_ muffin. 

She glares after him, but it’s half-hearted and fades as soon as she watches him head back to the walk-in to finish putting the produce order away, whistling and stoping at everybody’s station to check in on what they’re doing and what their plans for the Thanksgiving break are.

Tearing a piece of muffin off for herself, she lets her eyes and thoughts linger on Brad just a little bit longer. If her job duties were changing from recipe tester to YouTube star, her relationship with Brad was changing even more rapidly. 

Every interaction, every word, every almost-touch felt on edge and anticipatory, building and building and building towards _something._ She’d been attracted to him since day one—it was hard not to fall for him at least a little between the good looks and genuinely good, kind-hearted person he was. 

But he was her boss. And her friend. It would be messy and complicated if anything happened between them. As her eyes drifted over the curve of his backside as he bent over to pick up the last box sitting outside the walk-in, though, she was finding herself caring less and less about complicated and messy.

She slips her apron over her head, glances at the clock, and gets to to work. She’s got Christmas cookies to recipe develop for and a deadline to meet. For a moment, she breathes through the impending stress of recipe testing, recipe developing, _and_ Gourmet Makes. She’s come this far, though, and she knows she has more gas in the tank to get her to the end of the year. 

Besides, Thanksgiving vacation is—she checks the clock again—a mere eight hours away.

She can do this.

_____________________

“You’re spending Thanksgiving _alone?”_ Molly exclaims, looking up from her fifth iteration of puttanesca sauce. “I mean, you know any one of us would love to have you, Claire. Carla’s throwing some big shindig for her family and it’s just gonna be me, Toonz, and the hubby if you want to join us?”

Claire rolls out the cocoa and orange zest cookie dough to a perfect thickness and smiles at her friend. “Thanks, Mols, but honestly, I’m kind of looking forward to some time to myself over the break. I need a little time away from the city. But thank you.”

“Sheesh, between you and Brad, you’re really bringing down the hols mood.”

Claire frowns at her, eyes flicking across the kitchen where Brad is working diligently on something, head down and whistling to himself. 

“What do you mean? What’s Brad doing?”

Molly laughs, whisking in olives, anchovies, and capers into the crushed tomatoes in her prep bowl. “I’m pretty sure his family bailed on Thanksgiving this year. His sister went on vacation with her family and his mom tagged along to spend time with the grandkids so,” she shrugs, dumping the sauce into the heated skillet to let it thicken and come together, “I think he’s going to work over Thanksgiving, something for _It’s Alive.”_

Claire grabs the bucket of cookie cutters and begins punching out festive stars and snowmen, laying the dough carefully on the parchment-lined baking sheet, frowning. The thought of Brad working through Thanksgiving alone doesn’t sit well with her. Brad is pretty much made to be around other people, to cook and entertain and care for them.

She glances at him again, this time more thoughtfully, a plan forming in her mind as she walks to the wall oven and pops the cookies into the oven. 

He once took her to Cape Cod to cheer her up, to let her be herself.

It’s time she repay the favor.

_____________________

At half-past four, she finds him at his desk, headphones on and bobbing his head in time to the music, clicking through emails, and doodling on the pad of paper beside him simultaneously. She bites back a grin at the sight of him. Brad never was able to focus on one thing at a time. 

She leans against his cubicle, knocking gently on the edge of his desk to catch his attention. He grins at the sight of her, pulling his headphones off and leaning back in his chair, tucking his hands behind his head. 

“Hey! I thought you would be long gone by now. Adam let everyone go early.”

Tucking her hair behind her ear, she nods. “Yeah, I know. But I, uh, actually wanted to talk to you. Alone.”

He raises his eyebrows at her in surprise. “Oh yeah? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine. It’s just that Molly told me you were working here over Thanksgiving.”

Brad exhales slowly, takes his hat off and runs his hand over his hair before replacing the cap. “Yeah, I am. Some family stuff fell through, so..” He trails off, looking a little forlorn before forcing a smile at her. “But I’ll be fine. Got some stuff to work through anyway. There’s like, a hundred thousand million emails in my inbox. I just can’t ever figure out if I’m supposed to jump in on these conversations when there’s twenty people on an email, y’know? And—“

“ _Brad_ ,” she interrupts with a laugh, stopping his email communication tirade before he can really get going. Brad can rant with the best of them. “My parents are out of town for Thanksgiving this year and I thought, maybe, if you wanted to and since you didn’t have any other plans either, you wanted to maybe join me for Thanksgiving in Cape Cod this weekend.”

She says it in a rush, like if she says it fast enough she can outpace the butterflies rioting in her stomach. Nervously, she plays with the end of her braid, twirling it around her finger, waiting for his answer.

“You want to spend Thanksgiving with me? Just—just us?”

Brad’s voice sounds a little strangled and high-pitched and she rushes to soothe the situation, to _not_ make it weird.

“Yeah,” she says, too bright and cheery, desperate to sound normal. “I mean, no one should be alone on Thanksgiving and you seemed like you had a good time last time we went.”

Something tender and nostalgic crosses his face at that and he agrees, voice soft. “Yeah, I did.”

The butterflies in her stomach threaten to push out of her stomach and up out of her throat, so she swallows them down and twists her braid around her finger a little tighter. “So, what do you think?”

He takes all of three seconds to think it over before he swivels in his chair, leans down and rummages through the large bottom drawer of his cubicle’s storage, and pulls out a small duffel bag, turning back to her and holding it up with a grin.

“When do we leave?”

The butterflies in her stomach don’t stop fluttering and she exhales, finally lets herself breathe. She digs the keys of her rental out of her bag and jingles them.

“Now.”

_____________________

“You going to tell me why you had a weekend bag ready to go in your desk?” she asks, glancing over at him in the passenger seat where he’s diligently scrolling through his music streaming app and searching for the perfect road trip music. 

“Oh, I don’t know, Claire. You going to tell me how you got to park front row in the parking garage when I know for a fact you don’t got a parking pass?”

She blushes and readjusts her grip on the steering wheel before confessing. “George said he’d look the other way for me since it was just for today and he knows I’m trustworthy.”

Brad _howls_ and she frowns over at him. “What?”

He shakes his head at her, finally selecting a seventies road trip mixed tape playlist. “Oh, Claire.Ole Georgey boy doesn’t just look the other way. He’s a grumpy son-of-a-bitch. Hates everyone.”

“That's not true! He’s always nice to me!”

Brad looks at her over the lenses of his sunglasses, disbelieving. “Yeah, he’s nice to you because he _likes_ you. You turned on the Saffitz charm! That’s how you work the system, Claire!”

Her mouth drops in surprise. “I’m not—I didn’t— _Brad!_ Stop laughing! I didn’t charm him! He just—“

“You probably batted those eyelashes of yours at him and he was a goner, Claire. Trust me, I know.”

But Brad isn’t looking at her, isn’t laughing anymore. He’s turned away from her, starting out the window and she can only look over in quick movements, the ghost of her driving instructor haunting her over her shoulder about keeping her eyes on the road. 

She thinks if they were already at home and there was a glass or two of wine in her syystem, she may have the courage to push at that, to ask what he meant. 

(She resolutely ignores the part of her heart that beats with the knowledge that she already knows what he means, no wine required).

Instead, she bites her lip, turns the music up slightly, and redirects the conversation. That’s what they do these days: banter, flirt, toe the line, retreat. 

“So, I told you mine,” she reminds him, desperate to get him looking at her again. Maybe she will try batting her eyelashes at him. “What’s with the bag?”

It works and he turns to her, almost completely facing her in his seat, twisting the seatbelt out of the way, eager at the opportunity to tell a story that he just _knows_ will get her to laugh. “Remember that time that new batch of booch I was makin’ exploded everywhere? I was _covered_ in it and I had these little cuts all over my face and my neck and there was blood _everywhere—“_

_“_ No there wasn’t,” she interrupts with a laugh. “Chris told me what happened and I don’t remember him saying anything about blood.”

Brad looks affronted, puts a hand over his heart. “Excuse me. Which one of us were there, huh? And which one of us was covered in blood? Buh-bah! That would be me, Claire.” He ignores her laughter and carries on, smile twitching at his lips. “ _Anyway,_ so I’m there covered in blood and booch and then I had a meeting with the boss man and I smelled like freakin' fermented pineapple and a freakin’ murder scene. Never again,” he finishes solemnly.

Her laughter carries out the open window with the wind and the sounds of Paul Simon blaring from their car. They pass a sign for Cape Cod and she presses her foot down onto the accelerator a little harder.

_____________________

As they drive over the town line, Claire ignores Brad’s groans and complaints about being cooped up in the car for one second longer, and pulls into the local grocery store just a few miles from the Saffitz family home. 

“You can’t possibly be thinking of getting a turkey the night before Thanksgiving.”

She grabs a cart and throws him a dirty look, offended. “Please.”

Before Brad can barrage her with any more questions, she sets him on a task to collect asparagus, fresh corn, and as many fresh bundles of herbs he can carry. He wiggles his hands in front of her. “You sure ‘bout that measurement? Got these big ole mitts.”

She rolls her eyes, pushes his hands down and then pushes the rest of his 6’4” frame towards the produce. “ _Go._ Then come find me at the seafood counter.”

His eyes light up and he snaps his fingers before clapping loudly. “I like where this is going, Claire.”

Claire watches him go, eyes drifting over his form as he pushes his way through the chaotic last minute Thanksgiving shoppers, stopping to help an older woman pick the best looking zucchini from the top of the bin, then filling his arms with the produce she asked him to grab. 

_I like where this is going, too_ , she thinks with a flutter in her heart. 

_____________________

A bag of oysters, a couple lobsters, fresh veggies and hoagie rolls, and some pantry staples later (which _definitely_ includes the ingredients to make s’mores, too, even if Brad rolls his eyes when she tries to unsuccessfully sneak the marshmallows into the cart without him noticing), they’re finally, blissfully in the Saffitz kitchen and they don’t have to drive for the foreseeable future. 

Brad works around Claire as he puts away the groceries for tomorrow. Claire, meanwhile, is multitasking with the best of them: simmering crushed tomatoes, herbs, garlic, and olive oil in a quick pasta sauce on one burner, boiling pasta in a pot on another burner, and then finally measuring out flour, salt, sugar, and butter in a bowl on the counter that will soon become a pie dough. 

Claire huffs in frustration, eyeing the growing softness of the butter with a frown. “Brad, can you—“

But he already knows what she needs. He takes the wooden spoon from her hand and takes over on pasta, nudging her towards her pie dough with a soft, “Go get ‘em.”

He’s pretty sure she doesn’t even see him slide a bowl of steaming pasta towards her twenty minutes later when she’s elbow deep in forming pie dough pucks and preparing the pumpkin custard filling.

But he knows she’ll go like this for hours and prepare an entire Thanksgiving meal by herself if he doesn’t step in and force her to eat. 

“Okay, champ,” he says with a grin, putting his hand on her elbow and taking the metal bowl of prepared custard and covering it with plastic wrap before putting it in the fridge. “Grab your bowl and follow me, Claire.”

She looks up at him mid-bite, pasta hanging out of her mouth and red sauce smeared over her cheek. He laughs, tosses her a handful of napkins. “Yeah, bring those with you, too, you monster.”

Blushing, she picks up her bowl and napkins, and follows him through her house, barefoot and trusting in wherever he leads her. To her surprise, he leads them outside to the backyard where the fire pit is lit and crackling merrily against the growing chill of November in Cape Cod. 

“What? _When_ did you—How did you—“

He plops himself down into one of the lawn chairs and groans in satisfaction. “You get pretty focused in the kitchen. Didn’t even notice when I left.”

Her eyes widen, a blush staining her cheeks, as she takes the seat beside him, curling up and clutching the bowl of pasta to her chest. “Sorry. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. Baking and pastry just,” she sighs and shovels another bite into her mouth. “It just calms my mind and I can shut everything else out.”

“Whatcha shutting out?” he asks, brow furrowing with concern. 

Setting the bowl aside, she curls herself up and faces him, pillowing her cheek on her hands and meeting his gaze. “You’re gonna think it’s stupid.”

“Nothing stupid about you, Claire.”

She smiles at that. “It’s just—I feel this pressure. Here.” Her hand settles over her chest and she looks imploringly at him. “You know what I mean? Like, there’s all of these expectations and I never saw myself _here._ It feels like there’s been nothing but changes for the last five months and I just need…”

“You need to be home and make Thanksgiving dinner for two,” he suggests, eyes twinkling. 

“Yeah,” she says softly, licking her lips and looking up at him from beneath lowered lashes. “Thanks for coming, by the way. I’m really, really glad you decided to come.”

The firelight casts shadows over his face, hiding his expression from her. But her words hang between them, almost tangible. And there they are again, edging and toeing towards that line. She waits for him to crack a joke about not wanting turkey sandwiches or how he’d do anything—even subject himself to four hours of Claire’s driving—to avoid emails. 

But Brad, not for the first time this trip, surprises her, deviates from their script. 

He reaches forward and, with featherlight gentleness, cups her cheek. Her breath catches in her throat as her eyes fly to his, finding his normally bright blue eyes dark and shadowed. The pad of Brad’s thumb—calloused and rough—drags across the curve of her cheek, dips down to the corner of her mouth.

Her lips part, breath coming out shaky. “Brad, what—“

“Sauce,” he says by way of explanation, voice low and gruff. He leans back in his chair, pops his thumb into his mouth—the same thumb that had just been brushing over her lips (and fuck, her lips were still tingling)—and sucks the remaining sauce from his skin.

Claire watches his thumb disappear between his lips, watches the skin come back glistening and clean. Beneath her breastbone, her heart beats wildly and out of control and there’s no amount of steady breathing that can calm her. 

Another one of those moments hangs between them and it feels like this time it’s Brad waiting for her to go off script. For once, save for a nervously bouncing knee, he is perfectly still and focused—completely on her. 

But they have two more days in Cape Cod and then it’s back to New York, back to their scripted roles. Breaking character now would only hurt more later. 

She stands, nervously tucks her hair behind her ear and doesn’t look at him. “I should turn in. Big day tomorrow and everything.” She sneaks a glance at him and wonders if the look on his face is disappointment, but she can’t tell through the smokey haze from the fire.

“I’ll lock up,” he tells her. “Night, Claire.”

Thirty minutes later in bed, waiting for sleep that won’t come as she listens to Brad puttering around downstairs, her lips are still tingling. She traces her lips with the tips of her fingertips and thinks about the way he looked at her, the way he touched her, the way they took care of each other today—the way they take care of each other every day. 

Pushing herself up in bed, she kicks the covers off of her and swings her legs out of bed, standing and smoothing her hands over her hair into a tidy braid. 

Her whole body—not just her lips, this time—tingles in anticipation as she pads down the stairs towards where she knows he’s waiting in the kitchen. If there’s one thing Gourmet Makes has taught her in these last five months, it’s that you have to be adaptable, you have to break from the script and try something new, and you have to listen to Brad. He usually—irritatingly—has good ideas.

She’s willing to see if this—if _they—_ could be one of those good ideas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know! a cliffhanger! this chapter was getting unwieldy, so split it into 2! stay tuned for another chapter and a rating change :)


	3. thanksgiving part 2

In the hallway outside of the kitchen, Claire stops for a moment to take a breath in an effort to calm her racing heart and to drag her clammy palms over her sweatpants. Her relationship with Brad feels like pulling a soufflé, puffing and expanding and ready to either burst and collapse or to settle into something perfect.

Beyond the doorway, she can hear him putting around the kitchen, whistling in between bouts of talking to himself, words she can’t quite make out. Claire closes her eyes and just listens to him exist in this space with her, cleaning up the kitchen and locking up.

When she finally works up the last push of nerves to get her over the kitchen threshold, Brad looks up at her, a smile already curling at his lips, pleased to see her. She wonders if he expected her return. She wants to know if his thumb is tingling as badly as her lips still are. 

“Heya, Claire,” he greets, tossing the rag onto the opposite counter and leaning forward onto the island. “Couldn’t sleep?”

She steps forward, heart racing again with anticipation. “Something like that.”

Another step forward, another, and then another until she’s right there with him. It feels like it does when they’re in the test kitchen, Claire in the center and Brad at her side. It feels right.

Brad raises an eyebrow up at her, gestures to the fridge. “I mean, I can make you some warm milk or somethin’. I’m sure I could think of a pretty good bedtime story.” 

Claire shakes her head, bottom lip between her teeth. Nervously, her hands go to her braid, twirling the end around her finger. She knows what she wants but she’s never had to just _ask_ for it before. Alcohol had been her friend in these situations: drink up, make the move, and see what happens. But they were startlingly sober and she felt out of her element, out of her realm of expertise.

Her silence, so uncharacteristic, made the smile drop from his face. “Claire?” His eyes dart to her fingers in her hair and his smile returns, this time knowing. “You’re gonna have to work on that, you know.”

“What?”

He reaches out to bat her hand out of the way and his fingers replace her own in her hair, her loose braid wrapped around his fingers. The breath in her lungs leaves her as he tugs lightly and grins at her. “You mess with this when you’re feelin’ somethin’ big.”

Claire licks her lips, tries to refocus her brain on the task at hand and not on the way his knuckles are brushing against her neck or the way she likes the sting of pleasure traveling over her scalp as he tugs slightly at her hair.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “I’m feeling—I—“ Her hand reaches up to wrap around his wrist, mouth dry. She watches as Brad’s eyes darken and flick to where her delicate fingers are pressing into the veins of his wrist. “I need to just _check_ something, okay? I need to know. Just let me…”

Her fingertips drag down his forearm, detour over his chest and shoulders. He’s solid and warm and so perfectly still beneath her touch that she’s terrified if she stops or hesitates, whatever gentle, quiet tension has settled over them will be break and the moment will be lost.

When she shuffles forward and slides her hand over the cut of his jaw, he reaches for her, one big hand on her hip to steady her as she presses a delicate, soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. It’s chaste and tentative and just soft enough to deny it ever happened if that’s what they want. 

But when she pulls away and looks up at him, feels the way his hand tightens on her hip almost desperate and painful, sees the way his eyes are focused completely and totally on her, she knows there’s no use denying anything.

“Well?” he murmurs, voice low. “Did you get an answer?”

She nods, already reaching for him, one arm wrapping around his neck and the other around his waist, bunching the fabric of his flannel shirt into her hand and tugging him back towards her. 

“Thank fuck,” he breathes out, hauling her up against him and pressing his mouth to hers. 

If his thumb on her lip earlier that night caused her mouth to tingle, she didn’t know how to explain the tendrils of fire and feeling creeping across her nerve endings now. Everywhere he touched her—the graze of his teeth over her tongue and lips, his hand creeping beneath the hem of her shirt and skirting over the warm skin of her lower back, the scruff of his beard dragging over her cheek and neck—it was on the verge of being overwhelming, her head going light and fuzzy, her skin becoming too tight for her body, needing to shift and explode out of it.

But she gave as good as she got, gave in to every fleeting thought and fantasy. She whimpered under his mouth and pushed herself against him, tried to wrap herself tightly around him: arms around his neck, her leg pushing between his legs to get closer, her hand threading through soft, riotous curls that he had no business hiding from her. Not anymore. 

“Claire,” he growled into the skin of her neck, tongue dipping along the tendons there and pausing to suck and lave at the pulse point thudding beneath her skin. “What are we doin’ here, babe? You gotta tell me what you want.”

His hands pushed her shirt up, big hands covering the curve of her stomach and the tips of his fingers brushing the underside of her breasts; teasing, waiting. She put a hand on his chest, trying to catch her breath, trying to _think_ beyond the way he was making her feel right now. 

“You,” she managed to get out, looking up at him from beneath dark, lowered lashes. “I want you.”

He cupped her cheek, smiling softly at her, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, I got that part,” he teased. “But this is your call, how far we go. Whatever you want.”

Claire’s heart thundered in her chest as she watched him wait for her, defer to her. She did want him, wanted to know what it felt like to have him press her down into the mattress and make her feel out of control and alive. 

But he was her boss and her friend. It was one thing to exchange a few heated kisses and another to take him by the hand and lead him up to her bedroom and obliterate every professional line between them. It would be awkward back in New York and she didn’t know if she could handle losing the spark between them, the foundation of their friendship, and—

“Hey.” Brad’s finger curled beneath her chin and lifted her face, dipping to press a series of soft kisses to her mouth. “I can hear you thinkin’ in there. It wasn’t a trick question. Red light, green light, up to you.”

She played with a button on his shirt, buttoning and unbuttoning it, finger dipping to press against the warm skin of his chest, over and over again. He let out a low groan of frustration at the teasing sensation and she murmured a soft apology, smoothing her hand over the button before sighing.

“I don’t want to lose you. If—If this goes wrong or something happens or—“ She looked up at him, eyes watery with thoughts of a future she didn’t want. “You’re my best friend. I don’t want to mess that up.”

“Claire, you ain’t gonna lose me. Not ever.” He lifted his hand up between them, pinky extended and wiggling. “Pinky promise.”

Without hesitation, she wrapped her smaller finger around his, squeezing tightly. “Pinky promise,” she whispered before grinning up at him and dragging him by their joined pinkies to the stairs and up to her bedroom. 

_______________

In the cover of darkness, moonlight and the faint yellow of a street lamp filtering in through the open window, Claire learns that Brad is a goddamn tease. He drags her shirt up off her body slowly, stops to kiss her stomach and each jut of her ribs and drags his scratchy beard over the sensitive skin of her breasts, grinning up at her as she sighs his name and arches towards him, demanding he touch her the way she wants him to. 

“Whatever you say,” he agrees, sucking her nipple into his mouth and working his tongue over the puckered bud, biting down lightly until she hisses and tugs at his hair, his name a strangled cry at the back of her throat. 

“Fuck, Brad,” she pants, tugs his up by the shoulder to get his mouth back on hers. But Brad doesn’t go easily. He nips at the curve of her breast, the gentle slope of her collar bone, her lightly freckled shoulder, and just when she thinks he’s going to kiss her, he presses a sloppy kiss to her cheek and works his way back down her body, tugging at her sweatpants and panties in one go. 

He slides his hands over her calves, the ticklish curve of her knee, drags his fingers over the inside line of her thigh, gently pries her legs open as he settles between them. 

“Red light, green light,” he pants, eyes struggling to focus, hands tightening on her thighs in anticipation of getting his mouth on her.

“Green, green, green,” she chants, desperate for him. “Stop fuckin’ around.”

Brad grins at her cursing, her impatience, her demands. Claire on the verge of orgasm isn’t much different from Claire desperate to get something done in the kitchen absolutely perfect—just unabashedly unrestrained and unhinged. He likes that he can reduce her Harvard brain to something babbling and base, likes that she’s down in the mud with him on this. 

Brad dips his head between her legs and slides his tongue through her wet folds, licking up every drop of wetness she has for him, lets the groan in his throat at the taste of her reverberate against her sex until she’s shaking beneath him.

“ _Brad.”_

He considers teasing her, considers dragging his tongue over her entrance and pressing barely-there touches to her clit until she’s panting and crying out for him. But he’s just as on edge as she is and he wants to feel her clenching around his fingers, his tongue _now._

As he fucks her with his mouth, tongue and teeth and lips working together over her clit and entrance, he finds himself rocking into the mattress, pushing his hardened cock into the sheets for relief. Above him, Claire is a mindless, babbling mess of pleasure, head thrown back and breasts arched up, one hand in his hair and the other trailing nonsense patterns on her body, heightening the pleasure he’s giving her. 

When she finally comes, it’s with two of his fingers inside of her, his lips wrapped around her clit, and his arm pressing over her lower belly, anchoring her to the bed. She’s boneless and floaty, reaching for him lazy movements, wanting him on top of her, wanting him inside of her.

Brad goes to her easily, blazes a trail of kisses up her stomach and sternum and throat and lips. She sighs at the taste of herself on his lips, their flavors mingling into something sweet and musky and _sex._

“Your turn.” Her eyes are dark and glassy with pleasure and focus. Brad considers rolling onto his back and letting her work her mouth and hands and tongue over him until he’s spent, has fantasized about the feel of her perfectly pursed mouth wrapped around him. 

But the taste of her is still on his tongue and the only thing he wants in the world right now is to be inside of her, to be as close to her as humanly possible. He’s not sure if the warmth in his chest is love, but he likes the way Claire makes him feel when they’re together. And now? Now he feels like he’s on fire and Claire is the only soothing balm. 

At the touch of her hand, he hisses and pushes his hips up into her warm palm. She plants a soft kiss to his chest, ducks her head and grazes her teeth over his nipple. “ _Fuck, Claire,”_ he pants as she grins and repeats the action, tightens and twists her hand over his cock.

If she keeps it up, he’s going to come embarrassingly fast, so he grips her wrist and tugs gently to stop her motions, kisses her confused protest away, and pins her hand above her head, rolling atop her and settling between her legs.

“Okay?” he asks, the tip of his cock nudging at her entrance, dipping inside of her and making them both moan. 

“Yes,” she tells him. “ _Yes.”_

When he slides inside of her, one hand beneath her thigh to tilt her hips up and allow him to fuck her at a deeper angle, he keeps their hands entangled above her head, pinkies and fingers entwined. 

Whatever else happens, they have this moment, they have tonight.

Claire comes for the second time, nails scratching down his back and his name a sigh and a prayer amongst a litany of _Oh God, Fuck, Right there, Christ._ Brad soon follows, head buried in her neck as he spills himself inside of her, mouth open and panting against her skin as she clutches around him. 

(She curls around him afterwards, presses absentminded kisses to his chest, drags her hand up and down his stomach and teases him by drifting her hand lower and lower until she’s cupping him, stroking and teasing. He breaks, rolls her back underneath him with a growl. “You asked for it, Safftiz.”

She sighs as he slides into her for the second time that night before hitching a leg over his hip and rolling him back onto his back. It’s her turn to be in charge.)

(They barely get any sleep between sleepy murmurs and lazy touches, soft stories told in the dark about scars on their body and how much they’ve wanted each other. Thanksgiving arrives a few hours later with a bright sun, sunlight streaming over the bed and their entwined bodies.)

_____________________

The next morning should feel more awkward than it does, but they _fit_ together here as well as they do in the kitchen. They brush their teeth together before Brad turns the shower on, both of them slipping in and soaping up, rinsing away the evidence of last night from their skin. Claire traces the marks she left on his back with mortification but Brad beams and puffs his chest out, proud to bear her mark. He presses his fingertips into the bruises at her hip from where he’d gripped her last night and doesn’t apologize, just drops to his knees and kisses the darkened skin before nudging her legs apart.

(The water in the shower goes cold as he holds her against the slick tile and fucks her slowly, her legs wrapped around his waist and their mouths pressed together fiercely.)

The rest of the day is spent in one of the best Thanksgiving dinners she can ever remember having. As she preps the potatoes, Brad drags the sheets down to the laundry room before joining her at her side with a glass of wine and a chaste kiss to her cheek. 

Thanksgiving in the Saffitz home is filled with soft music, a couple of bottles of wine, and the finest New England feast on the coast. She finds herself doubled over with laughter when Brad holds up the empty oyster shells to his chest and pretends they’re a bra protecting his modesty. Brad salutes her with every order she gives in the kitchen and she likes that today she can curl her fingers into his shirt and shut him up with a soft kiss.

She’s allowed that today.

Brad refills her wine glass as she drops the lobsters into the boiling pot of seasoned water and he props a hip against the counter and regals her with his theory about pilgrims having a seafood feast instead of some stupid fucking turkey. 

She nods along and watches him hand her the tools she needs without being asked. The flutter of butterflies in her chest and stomach every time she looks at him is getting stronger and she doesn’t know what that means for them. 

But today, they settle at the table outside with fresh wine glasses, beautifully mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus, and the best steamed lobsters and freshly shucked oysters. Today is a good day, just the two of them with their feet pressed together beneath the table, and no worries. 

“Hey, Claire?”

She hums between sips of wine in quiet acknowledgement. He takes her hand and entwines their fingers, lifts their joined hands to his mouth and presses a reverent kiss to the back of her hand. 

“Thank you for inviting me up here and for—for everything. I, um. Shit, words ain’t really my thing, but—“ He sighs, gives up on trying to put into words what he’s feeling and settles on, “I’m pretty damn thankful that you’re in my life.”

Claire hopes he doesn’t notice that when she kisses him, it’s tinged with desperation and a touch of goodbye. She’s thankful for him in her life, too. It’s _because_ she needs him that she knows she can’t have him like this. It’s too risky. 

When she breaks the kiss, she links their pinkies together as a reminder to them both and tries not to notice the way Brad’s eyes won’t meet hers after dinner. He knows the risk, too; knows this is their last night like this.

(It doesn’t stop them from cuddling on the couch after dinner with a pair of forks and the entire pie plate between them while terrible Christmas Hallmark movies play softly in the background. She dozes softly against him, hand curled into his shirt, absolutely safe in his arms. He presses a soft kiss to her head and pulls the blanket on the back of the couch over them both, reaching behind him to turn the lamp off. This is exactly how he wants to spend his last night in Cape Cod: holding her and pretending that everything could be different.)

_____________________

The ride back to New York is a tense one as he fights the urge to reach out and touch her as easily as he had been allowed the previous twenty-four hours. Claire had been fluttery around him, careful to avoid touching him as they loaded up the back of the car and said goodbye to her parents’ home. 

“We gonna talk about what happened or—or what you want to happen when we get back home?” 

Claire glanced at him from the corner of her eye, grip tightening on the steering wheel. She licked her lips, tried to get her thoughts in order, tried to separate them from her feelings. If she left her thoughts with her feelings too long, things would become blurry and messy. She needed order and structure and for things to be _right._ Too much was changing in her life right now. She needed him to be a constant.

“It’s not that I regret what happened,” she starts. “It was…” She trailed off, searching for the right words. 

For once, Brad had them for her.

“It was fucking awesome.”

She smacked his arm, half-heartedly. “ _Brad.”_

“It was! Well, for me, anyway.” 

“Yeah,” she said softly, smiling sadly. “For me, too.”

“But?”

“ _But_ , you’re my boss, Brad. I know you don’t act like one, but on paper you are. And that—that matters to me.”

“I don’t have to be,” he said, staring out the windshield, trying to keep his voice casual. “If the only thing holding you back from us is that, I would give it up. I’m already thinkin’ of handin’ the reigns to Gaby. It’s gettin’ pretty fuckin’ crazy trying to travel for the show and keep up with the kitchen paperwork.”

Claire’s brain went into overdrive at the thought of another change: Brad no longer manager? Did that mean he was going to be traveling more? On the one hand, his not being her boss any more would open up another avenue for their relationship, something serious and real. But the panicky, fluttery feeling in her chest had her shaking her head. 

“I—It’s more than just you being my boss. Everything is changing and I need to just wrap my head around this Gourmet Makes thing and still keeping up with freelance work and everything else Adam wants from me. I just, I need you to be my friend when we’re in New York. I need you to be Brad.”

There was a long silence, the only noise the soft country music filtering in through the speakers. She wondered if she had overstepped, if she had ruined this thing between them anyway, even in her efforts to salvage their friendship. Worry twisted in her stomach and she really, _really_ wished they had had this conversation anywhere besides a vehicle traveling more than seventy miles an hour with their hearts on the line.

Finally, Brad spoke, “So, what you’re saying is, ‘What happens in Cape Cod, stays in Cape Cod?’”

“Yeah,” she huffed out. “I guess I am.”

“Okay,” he said. She wasn’t sure if she imagined the wistfulness in his voice or not, but she couldn’t bring herself to pry too hard. This was for the best. This was what they both needed. 

“And for the record, Claire,” he added. “I’m always gonna be your friend—New York, Cape Code, freakin’ Timbuktu. Don’t matter. So if that’s one of those things your big brain is worryin’ about, you can cross it off your list, k?”

She sucked in a shaky breath and nodded before whispering, “Okay.”

The next time Brad leaned forward to adjust the temperature of the air conditioning, he let his finger drag alongside her pinky, the ghost of a reminder, as they sped back towards their life in New York and away from the fantasy of a life in Cape Cod. 

It was like Claire said—and he was pretty sure Claire was always right—it was for the best. 

_____________________

On the ferry ride home, shoulders still aching from her nail marks in his skin and missing her already, he pulls out his phone and fires off a text, hopes it’s in keeping with the strict line and rules she’s established. 

_cape cod. next month. u and me. red light green light?_

He holds his breath, bounces his phone between his hands, waits for the _ding_ that indicates she’s texted him back. If all he can have of her is a few days in Cape Cod, if that’s where the line exists for her, he’ll toe it. For her. 

In his hands, his phone buzzes and dings simultaneously, and he opens her text message with his heart in his throat. At her message, he lets out a long, shaky, triumphant breath of relief.

_Green light._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, that escalated quickly. let me know what you think!


	4. New Year's Eve

They don’t see Cape Cod again until the New Year and when they do go, it isn’t because she’s stressed or he’s lonely. It’s because they miss each other and the stolen, almost-there touches sustaining them over the last two months isn’t enough for them anymore.

Claire watches from the wooden bench on the pier as Brad comes back towards her, carrying two piping hot hot chocolates piled high with whipped cream, stopping every thirty feet or so to apologize to the hungry seagulls flocking towards him. 

“I’m _sorry_ guys, I don’t got nothin’ for ya today, alright?”

_Squawk!_

“Hey! Now that’s not nice is it?” He looks up and sees her giggling at him. “Claire! Claire, you see the way this seagull is fuckin’ talkin’ to me? Fuckin’ ungrateful.”

Claire rolls her eyes at him, taking the rich drink from him and cradling it against her chest while it warms her hands, sighing and scooting closer to Brad on the bench and soaking up some of his warmth, too. “You’re not supposed to feed them or encourage them. That’s why they keep coming back. They probably remember you from the summer when you threw them half of your chowder bowl.”

“Claire,” he says patiently, sliding an arm around her shoulders and rubbing his hand up and down her side to help generate a little extra warmth, sipping at his hot chocolate. “They looked hungry! What was I supposed to do?”

She tilts her head up at him, eyes crinkling with happiness as she smiles at his _kindness._ It was so easy to get wrapped up in the energy of New York that encouraged cutthroat behavior, stepping on anyone and everyone to get to where you needed to go. But Brad constantly reminded her there were still good people out there; people who wanted to feed overlooked seagulls and stop and help little old ladies find their way to the right subway station.

“Oh, look at you—Here.”

Before all _this,_ she thinks she may have just blushed and looked down and mumbled something about whipped cream on his top lip. Maybe she wouldn’t have said anything, instead opting to just let him find it on his own in a few minutes.

But _now._ Now under the rules of Cape Cod, she can lift her mouth to his and kiss the sweet cream off his lip, pull back, and wipe her thumb over his mouth with an affectionate, soft grin.

The rules, she thinks, are working out pretty brilliantly so far. Not that they hadn’t bent them a little, toed the line as they always had. Except the line had been nudged a little further towards the end zone (hey, she was still working on the sports metaphors Brad insisted she learn). 

In New York, he was exactly what she needed him to be in an ever-changing world: stable, reliable, _there._ He still texts her when he’s on the road and winding down for the night in the hotel, updating her on where he is on his X-Files marathon.

(She’d been mixing up a big batch of pâte à choux for a croquembouche _From the Test Kitchen_ video when they’d drifted onto the topic—as they always did—of favorite shows and movies growing up. Claire had been horrified to learn Brad had never seen a single episode. “Oh, Brad. We _have_ to watch. I really think you and Mulder would jive.” 

He’d perked up, leaned even further over the countertop to peer into her mixing bowl before looking up at her. “Yeah? _Mold_ er. What? Is he like, a fungus or something? Is it a fermentation thing?”

Claire’s shoulders had moved with the force of her giggles as she shook her head, scraped down the sides of the mixing bowl and begun shoveling the sticky pastry dough into her piping bag. “Okay, that settles it, you can come over tonight and we’ll watch a few episodes.”

There had been a moment then—just a moment—where their eyes had met, where they both were thinking about being curled up on the couch together in her Cape Cod home while Thanksgiving and fall movies played in the background. 

But that was there and this was here.

He’d hit his hand on the countertop, pushed himself up and away, and nodded, eyes darting around the kitchen. “You got it, Saffitz. You, me, and the mold guy.”

For the record, she had been absolutely correct in her assertion that Brad would resonate with Mulder’s conspiracy tendencies. A fact she regretfully found out as Brad reached over her to grab the remote to pause the show as he regaled her with big donut corporations and rodents of unusual sizes left unattended.)

In New York, everything had been the same despite the fact that she knew he liked the feel of her fingernails scraping over his back and stomach and he knew that she whimpered and begged for him to touch her when she was close to climaxing. All of that was mostly tucked away in favor of the more important things: friendship, the booming, exploding turn their careers had taken, the additional offers of collaborations and interviews and autographs (“Hell no, Claire. Second I sign someone’s arm or some shit, I’m gonna curse all this. No way. You can sign on my behalf.”).

But it wasn’t _quite_ enough. Because she _did_ know how he liked to be touched and that he would call her _babe_ and that being with him so, so scarily easy. 

So she settled for boxing him up a cute container of homemade Oreos with a little note telling him that she missed him in the kitchen this week, leaving it on his desk and allowing her eyes to linger on the bottom cabinet drawer and wondering if she asked him to go to Cape Cod when get got back if he’d have a go-bag still at the ready.

She settled for biting her lip and letting him teach her about extruders and welding and, to her credit, had only stolen a single touch from him: a swipe of her finger over the side of his index finger, giddy and exhilarated in the moment as she remembered what those fingers could do to her. 

Their eyes had met and she’d _known_ he was thinking the same thing, too. He’d stepped closer on the next test at the KitchenAid as it extruded her Twizzler mixture, the edge of his foot nudging hers, his head tilting so close to hers. 

(The brief cooling period in the walk-in calmed her racing heart and she’d pulled her phone out to quickly text him: _Red light. I’m sorry._

But he’d responded quickly, a tiny green heart and a cowboy hat-wearing emoji with a thumbs up and a simple: _brakes on.)_

This time, when she asked him to come to Cape Cod with her over the long New Year’s break, there had been no need for pretense, no need for subterfuge. It had been so simple to ask him for what she wanted. They belonged together up there. That was just the rules. 

Here, in the bitterly cold and windy Cape Cod bay breeze, pressed up against him, the taste of Brad and hot chocolate and whipped cream on her tongue, she wasn’t sure she would find it in her to leave this place and go back to New York where the rules weren’t quite the same.

She was afraid if she kept this up much longer, she’d forget the rules altogether. 

_____________

“Claire, s’mores are _not_ dinner. Oh Christ, look at you, you’re a fucking mess.”

She’d stuck her tongue out at him from her place on the bay shore where their bonfire was crackling merrily, her lips and cheeks and the tip of her nose covered in white, sticky marshmallow, her fingers smeared with chocolate, and amidst the carnage little crumbs of graham cracker stuck to her face. 

They’d opted to ring in the New Year outside along the water’s edge. She may not necessarily love the outdoors the way that Brad did, but they both shared a fondness for fresh air and being reminded there was more to life than the four walls of a test kitchen and the skyscraper-saturated skyline of the city. 

(She still didn’t know how to tell him that these days, the four walls of the test kitchen were feeling slowly suffocating; that even with him there to cheer her up and make sure she was eating lunch, the pressure of having the camera in her face, the stress of recreating the impossible, the scrutiny of the internet, keeping up with _Gourmet Makes_ deadlines and her other recipe testing and developing duties was all slowly creeping up on her shoulders, weighing her down and making her dread coming to the kitchen.

Being the person she got out of bed for seemed a heavy burden to put on his shoulders—even with shoulders as wide and nice as Brad’s. And then there were the days that she wondered…

Is this what she was meant to be doing for the rest of her life?)

For now, though, she only had to worry about the fireflies dancing around the tree line, the breeze off the bay ruffling the ends of her hair, and sitting back and enjoying the way Brad fussed over the strength of the fire, tossing tinder and logs atop it. 

She offered him her sticky fingers, eyes dancing with mirth. “Why don’t you come sit with me? Isn’t that why you’re here?” Her voice lowered, eyes drifting over his chest and the lean, long line of his legs. “It's why I’m here.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, mouth quirking up. “You been drinkin’ behind my back, Half-Sour?”

The nickname made her wrinkle her nose up at him. “You’ve cursed me with that nickname, I hope you know that.”

Brad plopped down next to her, plucked her canned wine from her hands and took a few healthy chugs, ignoring her protests. “Cursed you! _Cursed_ you? Claire, I’m offended. I _gifted_ you that nickname.”He looked at her fondly, eyeing the sticky mess around her mouth, and leaned forward with a soft, “C’mere.”

She went willingly, let him kiss her gently, teeth grazing over her bottom lip and tongue flicking at the corners of her mouth to collect as much sweetness as he could. When he pulled back, he was a little starry eyed. Kissing him had the same affect on her and she swayed forward, chasing after him, asking for another kiss. 

He gave it willingly, murmuring against her mouth, “Don’t taste so half-sour to me.” 

“Brad,” she whined, leaning back onto their blanket and tugging him atop her. “Shut up.”

They tangled themselves up on the scratchy, patterned blanket they’d laid out for themselves, Claire’s leg thrown over his hip as she tucked herself against him, both of them looking up at the stars.

“I miss this,” she whispers, fingers mimicking the pattern of the stars’ constellations against his stomach and chest. 

Brad kisses her forehead, squeezes her hand that’s resting on his chest. “The stars or—“ He trails off and she hears the unspoken question: _Us?_ She turns her head into the curve of his body, presses a soft kiss to his chest through his shirt. 

“Both,” she confesses. 

“Claire,” he says softly, lips pressing to the crown of her head over and over again in a series of soft kisses. “You know you got me, right? I wasn’t lyin’ back on Thanksgiving. You don’t gotta only have me here if you want me there.”

There’s a sharp inhale from him, like he wants to say something else but can’t find the words or the courage to say them. She squeezes her eyes, squeezes their hands together, tries to block out the outside world and any scenario in which she can’t have this. 

Pulling her hand away from his, she pushes herself up on an elbow and looks down at him, traces a finger over the bridge of his nose and the arch of his eyebrow and leans down to kiss him softly. “I can’t explain it,” she tells him, voice low and respectful of the silence around them. “But I-I think I’m scared to add one more change to my life. I think I want that—you and me and, and _this_ back home. But I need to think it through.” She flicks her eyes to his. “You get that, right? That it’s not you, it’s me.“

He laughs, reaches up and tangles his hands in her hair. “I’ve been given this speech before, Claire, and it didn’t go so hot for me. Didn’t see her again after that line.” The smile fades as he turns serious, strokes a thumb over her cheek. “Claire, I known since day one you think for twenty minutes before cutting a freakin’ apple. But if you got shit going on and you need to talk to me, I got excellent listenin’ ears.”

She smiles fondly at him, tilts her head into the curve of his palm, before ducking down and pressing a dry kiss to the shell of his ear, wiggling down to settle back against him. 

“I know,” she tells him quietly. “But can we—Can we just not talk about New York right now?”

“One New York-free conversation startin’ right now,” he agrees, his big hand splays out over her shoulders, drifts up and down the crook of her arm, dips down over the small of her back—over and over and over again until she’s drowsy against him. 

His voice rumbles through his chest and against her ear as he tells her the story of Sagittarius, the archer. 

“Not that it looks like an archer if you ask me. Form is all fuckin’ wrong, Claire. I’ll show you how to shoot one of these days. Maybe next time we come up here, I’ll bring my bow and, well, shit, you’re not gonna be able to pull it back, I’ll have to help you, but I’ll show you how _real_ archers do it.”

She falls asleep tucked in his arms and it’s not until Brad is shaking her gently awake at 11:59pm, the sky exploding with fireworks as the year comes to a close, that she realizes this was the only place she ever wanted to be: kissing him softly beneath the stars, no stress, no pressure, no expectations.

Just them.

“Happy New Year, Claire,” he tells her, tracing a fingertip over the column of her neck. 

She wraps her arms around him sleepily, tugs him down atop her with a sigh. “Happy New Year, Brad.”

_____________

For the first time in her entire life, Claire has sex outdoors. Not just outdoors, beneath a firework- and sky-ridden sky, a dying, flickering fire warming them both. The celebratory kiss, something so innocent and soft, had lit a fire low in her belly, curling tendrils creeping up her spine until she opened her mouth beneath his to lick into his mouth, suddenly urgent and desperate. 

“Claire,” Brad groaned, shuddering against her as she slid a hand between their bodies to cup his erection, the heel of her palm rubbing at the tip of him until he was bucking into her hand. 

“House is so far away,” she’d whined, arching her hips off the blanket, mouthing at the underside of his jaw and the crook of his neck. “Want you now.”

He’d never been one to argue with her anyway. 

Goosebumps pimpled over their skin as they stripped down in the cold air, immediately reaching for each other, lips trailing over the affected skin. There’d been little foreplay, just sloppy, desperate, passionate kisses; fierce touches that left their mark: purple and dark on her hips and his collarbone. 

“Christ, Claire, I—“ The words had been there, right at the tip of his tongue, right at the edge of his heart. But he’d swallowed them down and kissed her roughly, sucking at her tongue and thrusting against her, willing her to _feel_ how much he loved her, wanted her. 

She wrapped her legs around him, dug her ankles into his lower back and pulled him in deeper inside her, panting against his ear, encouraging him for _more, more, more._

He gave her everything, hips snapping against her, palm pressing roughly against her breasts and against her belly, thumb dipping to stroke and rub and circle at her clit until she climaxed and exploded in time with the fireworks above them. It didn’t take much more after feeling her clench around him to spill inside of her, shaking and shuddering and chanting her name like a hymn. 

“Happy New Year,” she murmured against his mouth, muscles still fluttering around him where he pulsed inside of her. 

“God, Claire,” he’d babbled, kissing her sloppily, pushing her hair back off her forehead. “We gotta do this every year, k?”

She closed her eyes against the casual promise of a future and wondered how much longer she could keep this up.

Brad carefully maneuvered himself off of her, reached over into their picnic bag, tan skin glistening with sweat despite the cold air, and returned to her with the marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers in hand. 

Her heart fluttered and she melted all over again, taking her favorite foods from his fingers and kissing him gently. 

For him—for _this_ —she’d keep trying a little longer; would steady the wobbling house of cards that had become her life for one more chance, one more weekend, one more something with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh, yeah. well, the foreshadowing is on the walls. but we've still got a chapter of fluff or two in us before we get to all that. sorry if this chapter felt a little all over the place--it felt that way writing it. but hopefully it'll satisfy until the next coherent chapter!


	5. New York

It's less than a week since their return from their third trip to Cape Cod when Claire starts needing him. It’s been one week since she found out Brad Leone is a Scrabble cheater (“Brad, New Jersey isn’t a language! That’s zero points!”) and that falling asleep and waking up in his arms is better than any over-the-counter sleep aid she’s tried for months on end in New York. 

It’s been one week since he made love to her under fireworks with their hands tangled together; one week since the last of the darkest of bruises on her hips where his fingers left their mark have begun to fade. 

One week since they stopped at a gas station somewhere between Massachusetts and New York and he gathered her hair to the side of her neck and kisses her behind the ear, making her shiver, palming her stomach and hips and tugging her back against him while she refilled the car. “Not in New York, yet,” he’d murmured against the shell of her ear, nuzzling beneath her jaw and finally kissing her in a way that made her melt against him, reaching up behind her to tangle her fingers in his hair. 

(He’d stopped wearing his hat around her when it was just the two of them, something she took great advantage of as she twisted her fingers in his hair, smoothed her palm over a part of him that was only for her.)

It’s been one week and Claire already needs to leave New York again, take him by the hand, and escape to their haven where there are no deadlines and no expectations.

It’s been one week and she needs him.

_____________________

She’s slipping, too. It’s like he’s on her mind all the time and more than once she’s had to stop herself from referencing Stan the Seagull that he’d so fondly befriended on their last trip. Instead, she hears herself, like an out of body experience, ramble to the camera about Brad liking honey on his pizza; can hear herself bringing him up when nobody asked, like a schoolgirl with a crush.

_As Brad would say, ‘muy activo.’_

But Brad _would_ say that and the thought makes her smile to herself as she fights the urge to turn and look over her shoulder where she knows he’s puttering around. Brad in the kitchen is better than any security blanket. 

Today, she’s making monkey bread—something she’s done over and over, something she can do with her eyes closed. This is _her_ recipe. Between that and Brad’s presence behind her, she feels herself relaxing into the video, loosening up, allowing herself to tell stories as she butters the tube pan. 

And then in the middle of a story about Gorilla Glue and tiled bathrooms that she _knows_ she’s told Brad for—he’d been her first call, panicked and concerned at the _goo_ taking over her apartment, Brad chimes in.

“You cut it with a chisel. It’s a type of foam, actually.”

She looks up at him, buttered brush in one hand and a twinkle in her eyes, and asks him the same thing she asked him the other day: “Can you come over and fix it?”

Brad freezes, eyes flicking to the camera and back to her, confused. This isn’t part of the rules. He doesn’t come over and they certainly don’t talk about being together outside of work on camera.

He smiles—the fake, for-camera-only smile that she hates, and shakes his head. “Negative on that.”

She laughs him and the camera off as he walks away and hopes the embarrassed blush on her cheeks isn’t picked up by the new high-definition cameras Duckor invested in.

She’s slipping.

“Well, thanks, Brad. Anyway, so, I’m just dusting the pan with sanding sugar…”

_____________________

Claire is debating on whether she wants to make a run to the corner store for a chisel—seriously, what the fuck, a _chisel—_ or if she wants to try and tackle her email inbox which has grown exponentially in the last six months. The thought of the hoards of emails with offers and introductions, prying interview questions—each and every one of them asking her _What’s next?_ to which she has no good answer—makes her feel more exhausted than the thought of hammering away at hardened cement-foam-whatever glue that’s taken over her bathroom. 

The knock on he door, though, stops all thoughts of home repair and when she opens the door to reveal a sheepish looking Brad Leone holding a six-pack with his backpack slung over one shoulder, Claire feels a sudden, embarrassing rush of _relief_ at seeing him. 

“Heard you needed a handyman,” he teases, stepping into her apartment like he belongs there, turning to face her. “Thought I’d apply for the job and bring you a couple of these bad boys.”

Claire watches as Brad makes himself at home, dropping his backpack off by the kitchen bar and popping two cans of beer out of the plastic ring, throwing the others into the fridge. 

“I thought you said coming over was a negative,” she reminds him, taking the beer gratefully. It’s one of the few beers she actually likes and he was right, she _did_ need this after today. Brad tilts his head at her, plucks at the tab of his can.

“Well, there were cameras and shit and I—“ He sighs, takes her hand and leads them to her couch. “I got the sense you were askin’ me somethin’ different than what you were askin’ me, y’know? We been pretty good about keepin’ everything separate like you wanted so I guess I got confused.”

She drops her eyes to where his big hand is covering hers, squeezing softly and stroking his thumb comfortingly over the top of her hand. Her bottom lip wobbles and she feels the weight of her stress, her worries, her anxieties, settle firmly on her shoulders. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothes, taking her beer from her hands and putting it on the table, tugging her forward and into his arms. She goes willingly, desperately. “None of that,” he tells her, brushing her hair from her face, rubbing his hands over her back in large, slow circles. 

She clings to him, sniffles against the crook of his neck, fists her hands into his shirt and nuzzles into the collar of his shirt where he smells _so good._ “I’m sorry,” she says, sniffling and wiping her eyes and nose. “I got your shirt wet.” Her fingers rub over the little wet patch and he catches her hand by the wrist. 

“Don’t worry about it. This is actually my Kleenex shirt, thought we might need it tonight.” He tilts her chin up, brushes his thumb over the curve of her cheek where a stray tear clings. “You wanna talk to me about what’s goin’ on in the noggin’ of yours?”

There’s no energy left in her to fight the urge to lean her cheek into his palm, so she does so, letting her eyes settle onto his through her tear-clumped eyelashes. The words are right there on the tip of her tongue, the urge to dump everything she’s been feeling onto his shoulder. But Claire’s never been good at sharing her feelings on a good day and especially not today when stress and a confusing swirl of emotions around her job, her future, and Brad are complicating everything.

She takes a shaky breath and pulls away from him, lets his hand drop between them. “I’m okay,” she insists. Brad looks skeptical, almost offended that she would try to lie to him this blatantly. Conceding, she reaches for her beer, takes a long drag, and sits back into the couch cushions. “Fine, I’m not exactly okay. But I—I think I will be. I think I know what I need to do to get my head together. It’s just working up the courage to say it.”

That part, she is surprised to feel, is true. She knows, and has known, exactly what she needs to do to feel like herself again. But it’s maybe the first time she’s alluded to it out loud and hearing it, tangible and with direction, makes some of the stress and anxiety in her chest loosen. 

Brad’s fingers twitch like he wants to reach out for her again but he curls them into a fist and puts his hand back into his lap, nodding slowly at her, letting it go this time. “Well, I’m all ears whenever you decide you wanna say it, Half Sour.”

The nickname makes her glare at him and he beams boyishly at her. For a minute, they sit on the couch, grinning at each other, like this is something they do every evening after work. It feels more than nice and Claire shifts in her seat, licking her lips. 

“So, now that you’re here,” she teases, standing up and trying to pull his giant frame off the couch rather ineffectually. “You wanna help me fix my bathroom?”

He groans, finally cooperates and lets her drag him off the couch and pull him in the direction of the bathroom. “You’re a menace, Saffitz. A menace.”

The smile she shoots over her shoulder—impish and teasing and knowing—tells him she knows exactly the power she has over him and he, like a lovestruck idiot, follows helplessly, rolling up his sleeves and ready to get to work beside her. 

And then he sees her bathroom floor and he stares incredulously at her.

“Oh Jesus Christ, Claire. What the fuck did you do to your bathroom?”

“Yeah,” she says slowly, biting at her fingernail. “I didn’t exactly read the instructions.”

He hands he his beer, kneels down to get a better look at the expanded glue-foam and picks at the substance. “Okay, Claire, I got tools in my backpack. Go grab it and like, two more beers, minimum.”

She hands him his beer back and presses a quick, blink-and-you-miss-it kiss to his cheek in thanks before bounding away to do as he asks. He shakes his head softly to himself, cheek burning lightly from her kiss. The things he does for this woman.

_____________________

Two hours, two containers of pad thai and larb, and six empty beer cans later, Brad and Claire relax against the edge of the tub, red-faced and sweaty, but giggling and flicking beer can tabs into the empty takeout boxes, a reward for a job well done. 

“See, see, it’s all in the wrist, Claire. Just gotta—“ He flicks the tab towards the empty container with a dramatic flourish of his wrist. The tab rattles into the cardboard and he turns to face her, smug and triumphant.

She scowls, tries to mimic his motions, and watches her tab sail over the container to settle into the corner of the bathroom instead, missing her target by a wide margin. He laughs and she folds her arms over her chest, a smile tugging at her lips.

“You’re cheating,” she grumbles. “I don’t know how, but you are.”

“Not cheating, babe, just good ole fashioned _talent.”_

Claire sucks in a breath at his casual use of _babe._ Brad notices a half-second after she does and he ducks is head, twirls the last tab in his palm. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Forgot.”

She watches his long fingers push the aluminum tab around the center of his palm, deft fingers plucking it up and flipping it around nervously. And she _wants._

Tentatively, she covers his hand with her own, tugs it into her lap, smooths a fingertip over the veins extending in his wrist and the top of his hands. It’s soothing touching him like this, settles the unsettled within her. 

“It’s okay,” she tells him softly, continues to touch him, fingers scratching at the sensitive skin on the inside of his forearm. She feels him shudder and she marvels that she does this to him. “Thank you for coming over tonight,” she continues, eyes on where she’s touching him, scared to look at his face. “I needed this.” _You,_ she amends in her head. 

“I told you, Claire,” he murmurs, matching her tone. “I’m here for you whenever you want me.”

She takes a deep breath and raises his hand to her lips, presses a soft kiss to the center of his palm. These hands that helped her fix her ridiculous bathroom by chiseling painstakingly at her mistake. These hands that have always so, so carefully taken care of her. 

She needs him to take care of her tonight. 

“Red light, green light,” she asks him, swaying towards him, mouth upturned and asking for what she wants.

He cups her cheek, looks ragged and wrecked, a man on the verge of losing whatever self-control he entered this apartment with. “We’re not in Cape Cod, Claire,” he reminds her, voice husky. 

“Red light, green light,” she insists, fingers creeping up his stomach and chest to curl into the collar of his shirt. 

“ _Green_ ,” he groans against her mouth, kissing her hungrily, desperately. “God, Claire,” he pants, pulling away, immediately nuzzling beneath her jaw and licking at her neck, his hand palming her breasts through her shirt just briefly before continuing its journey to settle at her hip, griping her fiercely and pulling her into his lap.

Her knees settle on either side of his hips and she doesn’t even mind the brief flash of pain at resting her weight on the cool tile because his mouth is on hers, teeth biting softly at her bottom lip, and his hands are cupping her ass and pulling her down into his lap where he’s already half-hard for her.

She wriggles her hips, rocking against him, gasps into the curve of his neck, clings to his shoulders as she feels him hard and straining against his pants, rutting against her exactly where she wants him.

“Not fuckin’ you in a bathroom, Claire,” he says roughly, tugging down her shirt to graze his teeth along the swells of her breasts. 

“I don’t care where you fuck me,” she groans. “Just fuck me.”

He bucks his hips up at hearing _fuck_ from her lips. She’s so normally reserved and careful at work with the cameras around, terrified of ruining whatever pure image the internet and her viewers have formed of her. But here, with him, she can be herself, no restraints. 

They stagger upwards and drift towards her bedroom, losing clothing as they go. Brad pushes her against the wall, boxes her in with his arms on either side of her head as he fits a leg between her thighs and lets her rock down against him, searching for friction and relief. 

“ _God, Brad.”_ She scratches at his shoulders, pulls him closer, gets her mouth on his and sighs as she feels his tongue sweep into her mouth, stroking over every corner of her mouth. It’s criminal how good of a kisser he is, how he knows exactly where to touch her to make her toes curl and her blood boil for him. 

He pushes his thigh up between her legs, taut and firm, and she shakes, hits him when she feels him smirking into the curve of her neck. 

By the time they finally make it to her bed, she’s down to just her underwear—her bra sacrificed somewhere in the hallway so he could get his mouth on her, tongue and teeth on her pebbled nipple (she’s not even a little ashamed of how she’d arched into his mouth, gripped his hair and begged for him to nip at her a little harder). Brad’s not much better, his boxers tent impressively at the front and she’s on him before he can get his fingers in her pants.

“Let me,” she tells him, tugging his avocado boxers down, dropping it on the floor with the rest of their clothes. She flicks her eyes up to his just once to find him looking at her with dark, intense eyes before she reaches for his cock, encircles her hand around the base, and takes him into her mouth without hesitation.

“ _Claire,”_ he groans, voice strangled and desperate. He twitches in her mouth and she can feel the way he’s holding himself back from thrusting into her mouth, can feel the muscles of his thighs and hips fluttering. 

As she works her tongue and lips over him, licking and sucking and swirling, she feels herself growing wetter at the sounds he makes, the way he chants her name, the way his fingers roughly push the hair from her forehead so he can see her. 

The tip of her tongue goes taut as it flicks at the underside of his head, dips into the slit there where he’s salty and leaking fluid for her. Brad breaks, thrusts up into her mouth out of reflex and pulls her off him, her mouth glistening and eyes dark. 

“Fuck, babe,” he pants, kissing the taste of him out of her mouth and rolling her beneath him, hitching her leg up over his hip. He shudders against her, ruts against her body, his cock sliding over her slick folds. “I wanna taste you, too,” he murmurs, kissing her roughly. 

As much as she’s grown to love the feel of his tongue working over her, his fingers inside her, his beard scraping the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, she just wants _him_ tonight. She rocks them to the side, climbs on top of him and reaches between them, shaking her head. 

“Please,” she says, gripping him and angling the tip of him at her entrance. He nods, reaches up and smooths a calloused thumb over her nipple, thrusting up and sliding inside of her as she rocks and sinks down on top of him. 

The whimper that escapes her at the feel of him stretching her fills the bedroom and she shakes, braces herself with a hand on his chest as she rolls her hips, lifts herself up and down on his length, lets the size of him fill her. 

Brad watches with dark, hooded eyes as she takes what she needs from him, rides him until she’s quivering and fluttering around him, eyes screwed shut and his name on her lips. He thumbs her clit to help her over the edge, rocks his hips in time with his movement. 

Claire comes first, head thrown back and clenched around him. It takes very little for Brad to follow after her, coming with a groan and spilling himself inside of her. 

Claire’s out-of-breath panting condenses and cools against his chest and he rolls her off of him, kisses her forehead, her nose, her cheek, her lips, before slipping out of bed to get a washcloth and her favorite sleep shirt—incidentally, a shirt of his from their first trip to the Cape. 

When they’re done cleaning themselves up, Brad slips back into bed, wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close, nuzzling behind her ear. 

“We gonna talk about this?” he sighs sleepily, exhausted from a full day of work, bathroom repair, and her.

“We will,” she says softly, tightening his arm around her and scooting back, pressing even further against him so there’s no space between them. “Just not tonight.”

“K,” he says drowsily, pressing soft kisses to the back of her neck. “Can we just sleep for a bit? Last ferry home is in a few hours.”

She turns in his arms, tucks herself beneath his chin, kisses his neck and shoulder and heart, and closes her eyes while Brad sets himself an alarm. For the first time in months, everything feels completely, crystal clear on what she wants, what she needs. 

It starts here with her cheek against his chest and his body pressed to hers. 

_____________________

Brad walks into the test kitchen the next day with an iced coffee for Claire and a green tea for himself, whistling happily to himself, greeting everyone—even George the grumpy security guard—on his way up to the office. 

Last night felt like it had changed everything between him and Claire; something had shifted. The way she touched him… 

He shuddered pleasurably at the memory and he picked up the pace, eager to see her again. His feelings for her weren’t new; he’d been in love with her since almost day one. And when she’d presented him with this scenario, when she’d agreed to be _his_ for as long as they were in Cape Cod, he’d jumped at the chance to be closer to her. Now, with last night, maybe the rules were changing.

Maybe she’d decided weekends away weren’t enough for her either.

He pushed open the double doors with a flamboyant, “Hello! I’m _here!”_ It normally garnered a few laughs and if Claire were in the vicinity, a little eye roll and a small wave. But today, the office didn’t react, just stared at him.

The grin on his face faltered as he took the pulse of the room, noting everyone’s frowns, wide eyes, and low, gossipy tone. Carla came up to him, took him gently by the arm, and steered him to a nearby empty office. 

“Carla, the hell’s going on? What did someone die or something?”

Carla looked at the iced coffee in his hand where _Claire_ was scribbled in thick black ink from the barista. “Oh god, she didn’t tell you either,” she sighed, flopping down into the empty chair.

A horrible, sinking feeling settled in Brad’s stomach. There would only be one _she_ in the office that anyone would ever associate with him. “What’s wrong? Is Claire okay? What the hell happened?”

He could feel and hear the panic rising in his chest. Something was _wrong._

Carla sighed, took the drinks from him before gently grasping his hands. “Brad, honey, Claire put in her two weeks today.”

And just like that, the world fell out from beneath Brad Leone’s feet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i....i did mention this was going to be a little sad, right? also sorry for the typos. my computer is dying and the 'r' on my keyboard gets stuck and i'm too lazy to proofread


	6. Goodbye

For the first time since he’d started working a Bon Appetit, Brad didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be in the kitchen covered in memories of him and Claire: the station where she’d thrown a test Twinkie at his head, the corner coffee station where they’d stood side-by-side as she poured herself an espresso and he fixed himself a cup of tea, teasing her about the health effects of too much caffeine. 

The walk-in mocked him where their shelves were next to each other, his shelf labeled in Claire’s neat script, a small heart drawn hastily in the top corner of the masking tape and a smiley face in the other. He’d labeled her shelf in his scrawling handwriting, her name barely legible. But Claire had beamed at him and thumbed the little chocolate chip cookie he’d drawn on her label and told him it was the best looking cookie she’d ever seen.

He didn’t want Carla’s sympathetic, pitying looks or Vinny awkwardly shifting the camera from hand to hand, asking if he was okay, both of them treating him like he’d just been broken up with, like he’d been dumped.

(Even if it felt like he had, even if it his heart physically hurt in his chest and his stomach turned sourly with confusion.)

And here he was, thinking he and Claire had kept their Cape Cod rendezvous outside of the kitchen. Maybe they weren’t as subtle as he had thought. Maybe he had crossed a line, made her feel uncomfortable at work, driven her away—

Vinny interrupted his thoughts, knocking his knuckles softly on the work surface of station one where Brad was prepping for an It’s Alive shoot.

“We don’t have to record today, bud,” Vinny said gently, placing the lens cap over the front of the camera. “We—“

“Jesus Christ, Vin, I’m _fine_ ,” he snapped, throwing his kitchen towel down onto the counter, making the heads of garlic roll onto the floor. Vinny raised an eyebrow at him and Brad felt the irritation and anger seep out of him. This wasn’t him—angry and short-fused and stewing in hurt. He sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face, and plucked at the strings of his apron, pulling it off.

“Maybe we can pick this up tomorrow? I ain’t feelin’ so good.”

There was no waiting for acknowledgment, no asking for permission if it was okay to leave work in the middle of the day. He was done waiting. 

He needed to talk to Claire.

________________

If this were a movie, he thinks, he would have raced through the hallways of One World Trade Center and jammed his thumb on the elevator button and urged it to hurry up so he could race out the front door and sprint through the streets of New York towards her apartment as music dramatically swelled behind him. 

If this were a movie, there would be the guarantee of a happy ending and when he knocked on Claire’s door, she would fall into his arms and tell him this was all a misunderstanding and she’d never have kept something like this from him.

But life isn’t a movie and instead the elevator jams on the way down, he gets jostled on the way to the subway platform, and when he knocks on her front door, the only music in the background is the sounds of the city passing him by—horns blaring and the sound of rumbling thunder in the distance. 

When Claire opens the door, though, he takes in the sight of her: sleepy and disheveled, like she’d just woken up—messy hair, loose sweatpants, even looser sweatshirt. With a pang, he realizes that the sweats are _his._ He hadn’t even noticed that they were missing, but the last time he’d had them was months ago in Cape Cod. 

The memory hits him, the warm sunlight dancing across their bed as she’d kissed his bare chest and slid closer, sliding her leg between his and rubbing her stupidly cold feet over his calves and complaining about being cold. He’d tossed her the sweats and pretended not to notice the way she burrowed herself in them, nose pressed to the collar and inhaling deeply before settling right back into his arms and dozing in no time. 

She must have kept them all this time for those moments in between the city and the cape. 

“Carla told you,” she says simply, leaning against the doorjamb and crossing her arms over her chest. He blinked at her, eyes drawn away from the tantalizing strip of skin exposed on her shoulder as the too-big sweatshirt dipped over her arms. 

“Yeah,” he says, voice rough and _angry._ God, he’s so angry at her and he can feel it stewing and bubbling dangerously in the pit of his stomach. “Why didn’t _you?”_

It’s sharp and accusatory and she flinches, eyes closing. “We better talk.” She opens the door wider, steps aside. “Come on in.”

But the invitation is just barely off the tip of her tongue before he’s barreling through, spinning on his heels in the middle of her living room, hurt and anger and confusion swirling in him and begging for release. 

(He refuses to look at her bedroom, can’t bring himself to think about being back in there where only a few hours— _hours—_ ago he’d thought things were shifting between them for the better, for the permanent.)

Instead, he channels every ounce of hurt into the words he hurls at her. There’s no bumbling New Jersey diction right now, no stumbling and stuttering.

“What the actual hell, Claire? You’re leaving? And not only are you leaving,” he adds with a scoff, “You couldn’t bother to mention it sometime last night when I was here? I deserve better than that. After everything—“ He stops himself, afraid what he might say if he continued. 

Claire steps forward, reaches for him like she wanted to put her hand on his cheek. It’d been a favorite gesture of hers at the house at Cape Cod: reaching up to cup his cheek gently, thumb brushing over rough stubble on his jaw, her eyes soft and fond and always just a tinge exasperated. 

His cheek warmed in anticipation of her touch but she stopped herself, hand hanging between them mid-air before dropping to her side. She looked uncertain and apologetic.

Regret twisted in his gut. This wasn’t how things were between them. Being together was easier than breathing. And now—now he could barely breathe, terrified of losing her, of losing them. 

“I meant to tell you last night,” she started, licking her lips and searching for the words, eyes darting between the ground and his own. He hated when she did this, when she hid from him. “But things got out of hand and then you were gone—“

“I was gone because I didn’t think you’d want me to stay! We’ve never—not in the city and—And don’t give me that crap, Claire. I knew something was up last night and you told me you were _fine_. You said everything was okay! And I gotta find out from fucking _Carla_ that in two weeks you’re just gonna be— _poof!_ Gone from the kitchen?”

Claire shook her head. “I’m sorry, Brad, okay? I’m _sorry._ I should have told you. But I just wanted it to be like it was for a little longer.”

“You mean you wanted another fuck,” he throws back at her sharply. The satisfaction he feels at seeing her face whiten with shock and hurt fades the moment he sees tears glint in her eyes and her tiny fists ball at her side. God, this isn’t them. This isn’t him.

“That’s not fair,” she says softly. “You know you’re more than that.”

He opens his arms wide, daring her to contradict him. “Do I, Claire? I ain’t so sure anymore.”

Claire stares at him like she’s never seen him before and he doesn’t know how they got _here_ when last night had been so fucking perfect, when this morning he’d been thinking of asking her out to dinner to explore moving this arrangement of theirs to a more permanent basis.

And now—

Now she was leaving the kitchen, the place that started it all. _Their_ place.

“I can’t make you believe something you don’t want to hear right now,” she says cooly. “But you’re right,” she concedes, taking a half-step back from him and crossing her arms over her chest in a way that makes his heart twist. It looks like she’s shielding herself, protecting her heart against him. It hurts even more when he finds himself making the same gesture, terrified of the words that may come out of her mouth next. 

She continues. “I should have told you last night. Everything else between us aside, you’re one of my best friends and I should have told you what I was planning to do. And I’m sorry.”

“Why?” He asks raggedly, breath coming in short bursts. “Why are you leaving?”

Agitated, she runs a hand through her hair, strands getting tangled in her fingers. He thinks back to last night when his own fingers were buried in her hair, tugging her mouth closer to his.

He wonders if that was the last time he’d ever get to kiss her. A thought strikes him—the same thought he’s had since Carla had told him the news. “Was it—“ He hesitates but needs to ask the question. “Was it me? Did I do something or, or—“

“No!” Relief floods through him only to be stopped cold by her next words. “I mean, yes, in a way. God, why is this so hard?” 

“Just tell me, Claire. S’just me.” 

(He had murmured those same words to her on the shores of Cape Code as they talked about their fears and dreams, hopes and wishes. She’d been hesitant to share, always so used to hiding her feelings from everyone. But he’d whispered those words against the shell of her ear and kissed her softly and promised her it was just them…)

She looks at him, brown eyes wide and pleading. “God, Brad, I didn’t expect for everything to get so out of hand,” she whispers. “Everything—BA and Gourmet Makes and _you._ It’s all changing and I’ve got people asking me about book deals and interviews and—“ 

Claire met his eyes, tears spilling over. He stepped towards her, hand reaching for her, ready to comfort her. He hated seeing her upset, could barely remember the last time he saw her cry. If he could just get his arms around her, get his lips pressed to the top of her head so he could murmur soft placations to her, everything would be okay. 

But she stepped away and he stopped, feeling foolish. He scowled, hands crossing over his chest once more. 

“I’m not sleeping very well,” she confesses. “I can’t stop thinking about recipe testing and getting my articles drafted and edited by deadline. My brain literally won’t let me stop thinking about the millions of people watching this show and the expectations that come with that. Not just from viewers, but Duckor and Rapo, too. They all want something and I don’t know if I can give it to them.”

Brad can’t bring himself to ask if he’s asked too much of her, too. If he’s _wanted_ too much of her.

He thinks he may know the answer and he's not sure he can survive hearing her say it.

“I just need a break,” she confesses, tone turning pleading, willing him to understand. “I just need to get my head on straight and figure out what I need to give up and what I can keep so I can sleep again, so I can _function_ again. Do you—Do you understand?”

Her voice breaks and the last of his anger drains away. He can’t deny her anything and the worst, most heart-wrenching thing about this is that Brad does understand. He knows Claire Saffitz better than he knows himself—or, at least, he thought he had. But somehow he’d missed the warning signs that she was buckling beneath the demands asked of her.

Demands he may have made without even knowing it. He’d just wanted _her._

He nods, takes a deep breath, and tucks away the part of him that had hoped for something between them. This wasn’t the time. Not now.

(He refused to believe not ever.)

The way he felt about her wouldn’t disappear simply because she wasn’t in the kitchen with him anymore, wouldn’t go away because they didn’t swap notes at Adam’s boring meetings or take spur-of-the-moment road trips to Cape Cod for the best sex they’d ever had. 

He would wait. 

He would be one less distraction, one less demand. 

This time when he stepped forward to take her into his arms, he didn’t stop in the face of her uncertainty, instead scooping her up and burying his face into the crook of her neck and inhaling, memorizing the feel of her in his arms one last time. 

“I understand,” he told her softly, pulling back and brushing the tears from her cheek softly. She looked up at him through wet eyelashes, searching his face as if checking to make sure that he did understand. 

“You gotta take care of you, Saffitz, okay? We can’t have you burned out and falling down, yeah? So, y’know, take your time, collect your thoughts, get your noggin’ straightened out.” He resisted the urge to press a soft kiss to her forehead to punctuate his statement.

She sniffled and turned her cheek into his palm before sliding her hands around his neck and pressing up onto her tiptoes to curl herself around him, her words whispered softly against his ear. 

“Thank you for understanding.”

Just last night he thought he might have forever with her and now: two weeks. He hugged her to him tightly and squeezed his eyes and wondered how he’d ever recover from losing her from his every day life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! sorry it's been a bit radio silent on this story but i PROMISE it's not abandoned. I know exactly where this is going (I reckon we have about 3 chapters and an epilogue left). Now that the world is at a standstill (how are you guys doing? surviving?) I have a little more time to write and focus. I'm hopeful to have this story back to regular updates!
> 
> I know this chap was a little melodramatic and angsty but it had to happen to get this story moving along! Little rusty, so please forgive the clunky writing but as I get warmed up, our next few chapters should be much more satisfying! Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! Thanks <3 --Jess


	7. And Farewell

The Test Kitchen crew throw her a going away party, even though she explicitly tells them not to. She's forced to laugh her way through it, uncomfortable at the attention, and reminds everyone she’ll still be in the kitchen a few times a week, it just won’t be every day.

(Adam had outright refused her two weeks, steepling his fingers together and leaning back in his chair, a knowing smirk in place. “I don’t want to lose you Claire and I know there are—“ He had paused before continuing delicately, “Other _factors_ that may want to keep you here.” 

She’d blushed but lifted her chin and simply demanded, “What can you offer me?” 

The deal had been done in less than three hours and it looked like it wasn’t goodbye after all to the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen.)

Carla and Molly had ensured that her wine glass was never more than halfway empty at any given point in the night. Andy had hung a little closer than she expected and she found herself touched when he quickly hugged her and tells her he’ll miss her. 

Chris, however, had just rolled his eyes and told her she wouldn’t be able to stay away and he refuses to say goodbye because he knows she’ll be back sooner than her new contract demands. Still, he kisses her cheek like a proud big brother and tells her she’ll crush the freelance world and she better remember the little people who helped her along the way.

(She teases him right back, “Chris, I’m never forgetting the man who kept me supplied in coffee all these years.”)

But one person is suspiciously absent, always fluttering out of sight and nowhere to be seen. 

_Brad._

Rapo had dragged her two weeks into four, claiming a drag on paperwork and insistence she shoot a few more videos so they’d have it ready to go while she was on freelance duty. Those four weeks, though, had been the most trying and painful in the kitchen since her first awkward weeks here. 

Brad had done everything in his power to keep the distance between them. There were no more joint coffee and tea breaks, no more bounding up to her station and poking and prodding at her latest creation. He still occasionally joked around with her and offered a lending hand when she asked him to get the new pie dishes from the top shelf.

But the _ease_ between them was gone and in its place was a strained sort of formal friendship with a couple of left-footed klutzes waltzing around the emotional elephant in the room.

For her part, Claire didn’t know how they even got to this point. When she made the moves to leave Bon Appetit, she never intended to leave _him_ and this fledgling relationship developing between them. If anything, she wanted time away from the kitchen and seeing him every day tosee if they could even have anything outside of work. Part of her was terrified that so much of their relationship was built on those interactions, it wouldn’t survive a life without the structure of BA.

But between signing paperwork and shooting videos and Brad dodging her at every turn, there hadn’t been the time or opportunity to _tell_ Brad any of this and figure out if he wanted her as badly as she still wanted him.

She was determined to talk to him tonight—her official last day in the test kitchen.

Brad had come into the kitchen, she knew that. But the last she saw of him, he’d grabbed a beer with a grunt and half-hearted wave her way before squirreling himself away into a corner, watching the festivities with dark, brooding eyes.

When she next flicks her eyes to the corner where he was settled, trying to find the courage to talk to him, he’d met her eyes briefly before shaking his head, pushing himself off the wall, and slipping out of the kitchen and away from the party.

It takes her exactly three seconds and a half-hearted ‘Uh huh’ towards Duckor before she excuses herself as well and follows him down the winding, dark hallways of the Bon Appetit offices.

______________

She catches him swiveling around in a squishy office chair of an old forgotten conference room, looking at pictures of the BA crew. Her heart lurches painfully into her throat when she sees the edge of his thumb brushing over her face in the picture.

From the way he’s slouched in the chair and his head lolling to the side a little, she can tell he’s more than a little buzz. And, judging from the photograph in his hand, more than a lot morose. She leans against the doorjamb, her wine glass dangling from her fingertips and smiling softly at him.

“You know you don’t need pictures right? I’m not, like, dead. I’m right here,” she teases. It’s an attempt at rapport, at the light-hearted nature of the them _before._

“Yeah, here for now.” It’s supposed to be teasing but it comes out bitter and wistful and it makes the smile drop from her face.

“Brad....”

“Naw it’s okay, Claire. I knew you couldn’t be kept in the kitchen for long. Bigger things, a pastry destiny, a universe to rule, all that shit.”

She blushes because praise from Brad always means a little more. But she doesn’t like the way he says it like it’s a goodbye, like they won’t see each other again.

“Brad, I’m still gonna be around. It’s just not going to be every day.”

She’s standing in front of him now, looking down at him splayed out in the big office chair, slouched and buzzed and looking at a picture of her that she doesn’t even remember him taking. 

“Don’t go,” he says, so softly that she barely hears it.

She feels her heart break because Brad never asks anything of her and she can’t give him this. She can’t. She _has_ to go. She can feel it. If she doesn’t, she’ll suffocate in these office walls and never be more than this.

Claire drains the last of her wine and puts the empty glass on the table, steps between his legs and takes the beer bottle from his hands, tosses the picture onto the table, too, and wraps herself around him.

They’re too big and too old to be occupying the same chair like this but he looks so sad and she’s missed him so much and there was nothing in the world that could have stopped her from touching him tonight. 

He sighs and pulls her closer, wraps his arms around her more firmly so she doesn’t slip away.

It hits her all at once that she’s in his arms, that his flannel shirt is soft beneath her cheek, that she can bury her face into his neck and chest and that he’s doing the same, nose pressed to the crown of her head and inhaling, big hands stroking over her back and hip.

She pulls away, eyes stinging with tears and heart aching with regret. “I think we had a misunderstanding the last time we talked.” They both wince at the memory of standing in her apartment, hurling hurtful words and goodbyes at each other. “So I want to get this clear, okay?” 

Claire takes a deep breath and smooths the wrinkled fabric of his shirt beneath her palm, finding the courage to tell him exactly how she feels. “I‘m leaving the kitchen, Brad.” He stiffens, tires to pull away, but she curls her fingers into his shirt soothingly. “But I’m not leaving you, okay?”

He blinks at her, something hot and aching and frantic settling over his face.

“Let’s go,” he says suddenly, the alcohol-induced haze lifting in a moment of absolute sudden and desperate clarity. He shifts in the spinning office chair and reaches for her hand, enveloping it within his own. 

Claire shivers and wonders how she could have ever forgotten for one moment what his hands felt like on her skin: rough and calloused, covered in nicks and scars that only a life in a kitchen could inflict, and achingly gentle, cradling her hand like it was made of glass. 

His thumb swipes over the inside of her wrist before finding her pulse thumping beneath the skin, frantic. 

She bites her lip and manages to whisper, “Go where?”

“The Cape.”

The way Brad says it, it sounds like it’s not just Cape Cod, but _their_ Cape: a place where anything can happen, a place that’s all theirs. Anticipation grips her stomach until it feels knotted and heavy. She tries to take her hand from his, fear tying her tongue as she tries to find the words to tell him—

But she doesn’t know what to tell him other than, “Brad, it’s almost midnight and we’re at my going away party.”

Brad, though, is relentless: pent-up energy and alcohol combining into his own special brand of persistence. And still, this thumb presses and swipes and massages at her wrist, reminding her of what she could have if she would just let herself have it.

“The first time we went to the Cape, it was, like one in the fucking morning and we were two more hours upstate. That didn’t stop us.”

_Us._

She likes the way he still throws those words around so casually—we and us, Brad and Claire. 

The dim light from the desk lamp glows warmly over his tan skin and she feels her breath catch in her throat as she looks down at his upturned face, pleading and open. Her fingertips lift of their own accord to trace a single, smooth line over his eyebrows, down the line of his nose, and finally over the plush pout of his bottom lip, stopping to press gently against lips that have tasted every part of her, lips that have soothed every anxiety and fear.

Against her hip, she feels his hand tighten in encouragement, warm and heavy, tugging her closer. He nips at the pad of her thumb, tongue immediately swiping at the stinging skin.

“C’mon, Claire,” he urges, pressing her palm to his face and staring up at her. “I’ll get the keys right now and we can blow this popsicle stand.”

And it’s tempting—so tempting—to say yes, to let him wrap his arms around her and take her away from the party she didn’t want in the first place and take her to their little home away from home instead, to let him kiss away the hurt and ache and misunderstandings and strain from the last four weeks. 

It’s what she wants.

The word _yes_ is on the tip of her tongue, hands already sliding around his neck and her head lowering to his upturned face, when a loud bang on the office glass rattles around them.

Startled, she scrambles out of Brad’s arms, goosebumps erupting over her skin as his hands drag over her arms and sides. She ignores the sound of protest that slips from him, his fingers reaching for her uselessly as she steps away, putting the proper distance between them again.

In the doorway is Molly, Delany, and Andy, all holding handles of assorted liquor with shit-eating grins on their faces. “Hey! Let’s go, Saffitz! We got this place for like another hour before security kicks us out and I’ll be damned if I let you leave this building without gettin’ the gos from you.”

Molly’s eyes dart in an over-exaggerated, comedic way between her and Brad. “And I do mean _all_ the gossip,” she grins, eyebrows waggling. 

Claire rolls her eyes, turning to Brad and expecting him to be sharing in the laugh. The three stooges in front of them really are the worst gossips in New York City.

But the smile dies on her lips as she sees Brad staring at the beer bottle on the desk, frowning and brow furrowed. 

Claire turns back to her coworkers. “I’ll meet you guys on the patio in five okay?”

There’s a general clatter and clangor from her friends as they loudly make their way back through the mazes of offices and towards the patio, liquor in hand. 

“Brad? You coming?”

Brad shakes his head, a wry smile twisting his features into something sour and disappointed. “Thought that was my question for you?” He lifts his head and, not for the first time in his life, appears pleading with her: one last time. 

“What do you say, Claire? You, me, and the Cape? We can go right now. Jump on the interstate, you navigate, we’ll stop at that gas station with those little peanut butter pretzels you love and we’ll just _go.”_

But Claire _can’t_ just go right now. They aren’t at some shitty media training or on the verge of a long holiday weekend. Her friends and coworkers are all here for _her_ and she can’t just leave them now. Even if she could, Claire Saffitz was not spontaneous. She planned and accounted for every variable and prepared. 

Slowly, so slowly, she shook her head. “I _can’t.”_

Something swift and sharp crossed his face and the sight of him looking so _hurt_ —knowing that she did that—stung, left her chest aching. 

And just like that, before she could rethink her words and reach out for him, before she could explain, the expression on his face was gone. Instead of the open, earnest expression he wore as he asked her to run away with him, a blank expression overtook his face, eyes shuttering and leaving her out in the cold.

“Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. It was stupid.”

Claire flinched. He reached for his beer, turning in the chair slightly so his back was to her. 

“Have a good time, Claire. I’ll—“ He paused and Claire found herself leaning forward, desperate and anxious to hear what else he had to say. Finally, he tossed over his shoulder, “I’ll see ya around,” before chugging the rest of his beer and pushing himself up and away from the desk and slipping out of the office, leaving Claire alone.

She stood there, watching his silhouette disappear into the darkened hallways, and wondered how they ended up here and what she needed to do to get back to where they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the home stretch now :) thank you to everyone who has taken time to comment and kudos. they boost me to keep writing and they mean so much to me. i love this tiny little fandom and everyone in it.
> 
> (plus, y'know, claire doing it's alive today made me feel like a brand new fan all over again. it was PERFECT and I can't wait for brad and claire make croissants.)
> 
> thank you again for all of y'all who are sticking with this story! let me know what you think!


	8. Bring Her Home

The drive to the cape was different this time. Instead of being strapped in the passenger seat with a lapful of snacks and Brad’s phone in her hand, scrolling endlessly through his music collection and composing the perfect road trip playlist, she was driving down the highway alone.

There was no Brad to play the drums on the steering wheel before pointing at her and encouraging her to take it away with the air guitar solo; no Brad to pester her for snacks and beg her to play Spice Girls one more time (“I promise, last time I’m asking. Swear.” She had laughed and playfully pushed his hand away, blushing when he caught her fingers and pressed a kiss to them. “You’re a liar, Brad Leone,” she’d countered before hitting play on _Wannabe_ as he had asked). 

It had been her mother’s idea: one long weekend together as a family to recenter and reset before Claire embarked on the world of freelance, before she found herself lost in a sea of cookbook drafts, editor and publisher meetings, and deadlines.

She thought of Brad’s drunken plea for them to run away one more time, to keep _them_ alive a little bit longer. A glance at the empty seat beside her made her heart clench in her chest, hurt and longing spreading through her veins. 

For the first time since she turned in her two weeks and renegotiated her contract, since she decided to take this sharp left turn in her life, she questioned the decisions she’d made to bring her here _:_ alone on a winding road without _him_ riding shotgun beside her. 

Shaking her head in an attempt to clear her thoughts, she turned the volume up and let the sounds of _Spice_ fill the car as she zoomed down the lonely road towards Cape Cod and her family.

(She just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was leaving the most important part of her family behind her; that she’d somehow along the way missed a turn and lost her way.)

____________________

The kitchen was just _different_ without her, Brad decided. Chalk it up to energy and auras or the fact that her station looked bare without her pile of coffee cups threatening to topple over onto his side of their shared workstation, but it just wasn’t the same.

Without Claire announcing to him—multiple times in increasingly shortened increments—that she was hungry and ready for lunch, he missed the call for lunch orders. 

Without Claire, the days dragged. 

He wished she were here so he could ask her something just to hear her ramble. He huffed, shaking his head at his own stupid, aching, longing heart. A pile of washed and half-peeled potatoes and carrots sat in a bowl next to him and he angrily grabbed one, the peeler working vigorously over the unoffending vegetable, murmuring to himself.

“Oh yeah, real classy, Brad. Keep pining, that’s gonna help. Fuckin’ loser, huh? I bet she—“

“You know, you keep talking to yourself like this and people are gonna think you’ve finally had one fermented drink too many.”

Brad looked up, carrot hanging limply from his hand. Beside him, Carla grinned and gestured at his bowl of potatoes and carrots. 

“Need a hand?”

He nodded, “Yeah, yeah, thanks Boss Lady.”

Plucking a spare peeler from the drawer between them, Carla took up residence at his side, grabbing a potato and joining him in his peeling project. Brad was grateful for the help but hated the part of him that still wished it was Claire beside him.

(Claire would never help him peel potatoes. She’d much rather pull up a stool next to him and lecture him about the different variants of potatoes and her favorite ways to eat them. He could hear her now, equal parts imploring and excited, “ _Brad._ They’re the perfect food! They can be whatever you want them to be. Potatoes are _always_ there for you.” In his head, he envisioned himself saying something flirtatious and cheesy, maybe leaning down and whispering in her ear, “Does that mean _I’m_ your potato?”)

His own daydream made him snort with disgust—he really was turning into a lovesick sap. It wouldn’t do much good to keep fantasizing about something that would never be between them.

Claire had made that very clear.

“Did that potato piss you off or is there something you wanna talk about?”

Brad looked at the mutilated potato in his hands and shrugged his shoulders at Carla, tossing the potato into the bowl on the counter. 

“Just thinkin’,” he said vaguely.

Carla hummed thoughtfully, but continued carefully peeling her carrots in long, even strokes. He felt like he had in those early days in the kitchen, like everything he was doing was being watched and judged. He hated feeling like he was under a microscope.

“I was thinking, too,” Carla said, voice light and casual. But Brad heard the pointedness and he tensed, peeling paused. If Carla made it a point to come to your station, you listened.

“Oh yeah? What about?”

“Claire, actually.” 

Dread filled his stomach. The last thing, the last person, he wanted to talk about was Claire right now. Not while he was still recovering from the hole she blew in his heart. 

“What about her?” He’d missed the causal, light tone that Carla had finessed, instead his words coming out harsh and dismissive.

But Carla paid him no mind, just kept peeling her carrots and potatoes methodically. “You remember Claire’s first day? She was _so_ gungho about making sure everyone knew she could tough it out in the kitchen and didn’t need anyone’s help.”

Brad felt the corners of his mouth twitch upwards in fond memory. Claire had been a spitfire, the restaurant industry leaving a chip on her shoulder and her own competitiveness keeping her hungry to prove herself. No other staff member had left the Bon Appetit kitchen with their own hand drawn kitchen layout, complete with Post-It note reminders and a handful of highlighted notes in the margins.

“Yeah,” Brad acknowledged, amusement tinging his voice. “She was a stubborn pain in the ass.”

Carla laughed, nodding. “She sure was. _Is._ Stubborn, that is. Determined to go her own way without asking for help.”

And with sudden, startlingly clarity, Brad sensed exactly why Carla had the sudden urge to come peel root vegetables with him. 

“Look, Carla, I get where you’re going with this little trip down memory lane but—“

“Hush,” she interrupted. “I’m not done.”

Well, there was no arguing with her. He grit his teeth and flexed his jaw and nodded, head down. She took it as a sign to continue, stopping to collect the peeling scraps and drop them in the compost bucket. 

“Do you remember when she told you that she knew the way down to the cafeteria because she’d seen a sign for it on the way up to the office? And wouldn’t let you escort her down with the rest of the new hires?”

Like a family telling its own lore, Brad couldn’t help but dutifully fill in the next part of the story—just as he had every time they’d told this story at Thanksgiving and holiday parties. He huffed a laugh, shaking his head.

“She ended up in the boiler room a building over, got off on the wrong Oculus stop. I ain’t never seen someone end up so lost on their first day.”

(The unknown number popped up on his phone and he had happily answered— _always_ answer your phone, that was his motto. This time, he was rewarded with a tentative, embarrassed, “Um, Brad? This is Claire. Claire Saffitz. I’m, um, lost.” He remembered the defeat and chagrin in her voice, but when he’d finally located her in the boiler room, hair frizzing and face red, her chin was lifted defiantly and her eyes glinting, daring him to say something. All he had wanted to say was that she looked so damn beautiful and he’d never been so impressed with anyone he’d ever hired before.)

The memory of her was so clear and sharp that for a moment, he felt the heat of the room and heard her nervous giggle of laughter. Christ, he missed her already. He was pathetic. 

Carla nodded, laughing. “That’s right. She got it in her head that she knew best and wouldn’t accept any help.”

“Hey,” he said, feeling the need to come to Claire’s defense. He wasn’t sure that instinct to protect and defend her would ever go away. “To be fair, Claire did eventually call me and asked for help, right?”

“Oh hon,” Carla said, putting a hand on his forearm. “ _That’s what I’m saying.”_

Brad felt bewildered and frowned down at her. “What are you saying?”

“Men,” Carla huffed before speaking clearly and distinctly. “Claire’s on her way to the boiler room, Brad.”

“Pretty sure she’s on the way to the Cape with her fam.”

“The _metaphorical_ boiler room, dummy,” she said fondly, shaking her head at him.

“O-kay,” he said slowly, trying to follow. 

Carla took the peeler and potato out of his hands, putting them on the counter, and focusing his attention on her. “I know you two had something, Brad. No,” she said, pointing a finger at him as he tried to deny it. “Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen you both since day one, remember? _And_ I’m a mom. You’re not getting anything by me.”

Brad felt helpless, exposed. He just wanted to peel his potatoes and be miserable in peace. He didn’t want Carla here telling him how she had seen right through him, didn’t want her here reminding him of painful memories and talking in circles. 

“What are you sayin’, Carla?”

“I’m _saying_ that you need go after her before she gets lost in the boiler room. I don’t think she’ll swallow her pride and call you for help this time. You get what I’m saying, sweet cheeks?”

Brad shook his head. “Look, I appreciate what you’re tryin’ to do here, I do. But I don’t think Claire—“

“Do you love her?”

His mouth went dry, his heart pounded in his chest painfully. “I—“

“Because I think you do,” Carla continued on, as if Brad wasn’t having a mini stroke. “And I think if you don’t take that apron off and go after her right now, you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life.”

Brad blinked at her, not comprehending the words coming out of her mouth. He gestured at the bowl of food next to him. “Carla, I can’t just _go._ I got work and potatoes and—“

“You can go if I say you can go. I already told Adam you’ll be taking off the rest of the week and I’m covering your recipe development this week.”

“Carla…”

His friend smiled softly at him, hand cupping his elbow and squeezing gently. “I’ve known you a long time, Brad Leone, and the best version of you—the best version of _her—_ has been these last few months.” She patted his arm and winked at him. 

“Go get her and bring her home.”

He stared at her, shocked and heart racing. Suddenly, it felt like someone was giving him confirmation that everything he was feeling, everything that he’d tried so hard to convince himself and her of, was _true._

One more try, one last stand. Because Carla was _right._ Even as heartbroken and lost as he felt now, the months he’d spent with Claire in their own little oasis out on the Cape had been some of the best of his life.

And he wasn’t in the habit of giving up that easily. He and Claire had that in common.

Hope surged through him and he pulled frantically at the ties of his apron around his neck and tossed the fabric aside, leaning forward to kiss a beaming Carla on the cheek.

“You’re the best,” he told her with a manic grin. He clapped his hands together, exuberant and full of life, and waved a single finger around the room, gesturing to everyone. “You’re all the best, people. And I gotta go. I gotta go!”

____________________

Brad didn’t like driving alone, not now that he’d experienced road-tripping with Claire Saffitz. His playlists felt a little lackluster and he missed being able to slide his hand cross the console and palm her thigh and knee, squeezing gently and just leaving his hand there just because he could. 

(And because she sighed happily and relaxed into the seat, her hand settling atop his and her thumb stroking absentminded patterns over the back of his hand.)

He may not have Claire in the car with him this time, but he did have evidence of what she had taught him about the importance of road trip rules: snacks.

In the seat where she normally sat, piles of Starburst, sunflower seeds, trail mix, and Twizzlers were piled high.

Brad fished out a yellow Starburst and pressed his foot down on the pedal, urging his shitty truck to get to the Cape just a little bit faster.

____________________

Claire wondered how a lifetime of childhood memories could so easily be replaced by a few stolen weekends. Where she once saw the foyer where she and her sister had dragged sand and muck indoors to build their very own one-of-a-kind indoor sand castle, she now saw the place where Brad had scooped her into his arms and pressed her against the wall, kissing the taste of vanilla ice cream out of her mouth and telling her how beautiful she looked.

All over the house, memories of Brad—of them—blended and blurred seamlessly with the memories of a lifetime. It felt _wrong_ to be here now without him.

Even her mother’s teasing about Claire being in charge of a grocery and supply run since she’d be the one in charge of the kitchen all week had left her feeling hollow. Brad had made the same joke but had _enjoyed_ tagging along and playfully following her bossy orders.

It was difficult to remind herself that this was what she wanted. It would be too complicated—too much—to balance a fledgling and changing relationship with him (a frankly overwhelming relationship) in addition to the career changes she was making.

This was what she wanted.

(That was feeling less and less true with every passing moment, but maybe, just maybe, she thought, her head and heart would catch up and be on the same page by the end of this trip.)

“Claire? Honey? There’s someone at the door here to see you,” her mother’s voice called out to her from the front door. 

Claire frowned and padded down the long hallway, confused. Everyone she knew on the island had long since moved on with their lives and she didn’t know any of the locals well enough to hand out her address. 

She came around the corner and saw her mother standing in the doorway, talking in soft, hushed voices with the person at the door. 

“Mom?”

Sauci jumped, startled, and stepped back, revealing her visitor. 

“Claire, honey? This young gentleman says he’s here to see you.”

Claire’s heart leapt to the back of her throat and she felt dizzy and overwhelmed for a moment. The man in the doorway looked good, tan and strong and steady. Blue eyes stared at her, so open and filled with warmth and longing. 

“Brad,” she breathed out, drinking in the sight of him, shocked.

He grinned lazily and easily at her.

“Heya, Claire.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one! more! chapter! to! go!
> 
> thank you all for your patience. it is incredibly hard for me to write and create right now (as i'm sure is the case for some of you guys too!) but your comments and messages and kudos have really kept this story alive and on my mind, so thank you! let me know what you think! these two dummies are almost in the happily ever after stage!


	9. fin.

Sauci watches her daughter disappear down the porch steps and around the paved corner, down towards the coastline, with a perplexed expression. The man—Brad—kept a mindful hand on the small of her daughter’s back, steadying her as Claire stumbled over the pavement. Something about the two of them together captivated Sauci, unable to look away as her daughter seemed to unconsciously sway towards Brad, stole glances up at him from behind the curtain of hair falling in her face.

But what made Sauci pay attention— _really_ pay attention—was the way Brad was looking at her daughter, like she was the center of the universe and he was caught up in her orbit. She’d never seen anyone look at her daughter like that before. 

And, more importantly, she’d never seen Claire return the expression.

Once the couple disappeared around the corner, she shut the front door with a soft _click_ and turned back to her other daughter, Jane, who was staring at the door with an expression of excitement and triumph.

“So, _that’s_ Brad?” She tutted softly to herself, shaking her head. “I must say, that’s not exactly who I pictured when she spoke of him—“

“Oh, _please,_ Mom,” Jane said, hands on her hips. “I saw this coming a mile away. I told her weeks ago she was being an idiot about him, but,” she winced. “You know how Claire is when you tell her she’s wrong.”

Sauci laughed at that, guiding her daughter into the living room. There was groceries to get and rooms to clean out, she wanted to stop by the O’Neill antique shop and say hello to her favorite gardening store. But suddenly nothing seemed more important than waiting for the return of her daughter and to interrogate her about this Brad man. 

“So,” she said, trying to keep an air of nonchalance as they relaxed back onto the couch. “You know him? Brad?”

Jane laughed. “I’m surprised you don’t.”

Sauci frowned. “I supposed I’ve heard Claire mention him here and there, but—“

“No, no, Mom, that’s not what I mean. I _mean,”_ She lowered her voice, eyebrows raising suggestively. “I’m surprised you haven’t run into them up here.”

“What? They—“

“Going at it like rabbits up here every other weekend for the last few months. That’s not how Claire phrased it and it took me hours to get it out of her, but,” she shrugged, grinning. “Claire’s always surprising us, I guess.”

Sauci couldn’t help it: her mouth dropped open and she felt a pinprick of embarrassment. It was never pleasant being faced with your child’s sex life. 

“That, young lady,” she said sternly, “is _not_ why I gave you and your sister keys to this place. I don’t want this _family_ home being turned into some sort of, of—“ She spluttered before settling—dramatically—on, “ _Roadside brothel.”_

“Oh my god, mom,” Jane said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like that at all. Not with them.”

“Then what would you call it?” Sauci demanded.

Her daughter turned her attention to the closed front door, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“For them? I’d call it a beginning.”

____________

The wind whips around them as they approach the edge of the beach. It’s a beautiful day—somewhere between Spring and Summer—and the cool breeze provides relief against the warm rays of the sun. But Claire watches Brad toe off his shoes (he never did like wearing them much and she can practically _hear_ his rant against shoes, underwear, and socks) and she feels the strangest urge to shiver when he wriggles his toes in the warm sand and takes in a deep breath.

He offers her a look of relief. “Missed this place. Good sand— _great_ sand. Y’know, most beaches these days are all rocky or covered in garbage, but not this place.”

It’s the most he’s said to her since her farewell party and she wants to wrap herself up in his words. It hits her that while she’s comforted herself over the past week or so with what he may have said, the Brad in her head doesn’t compare in the slightest to the real thing. 

She smiles at him, indulging the beach ramble as the olive branch that it is. “Yeah, this place has pretty great sand.”

He gestures at the shoreline, wriggles his toes in the sand, and offers her his arm. “Can I take you on a walk, Claire Saffitz?”

Her hand slips into the crook of his arm easily and she tries valiantly to duck her head, hide her smile. He really can be charming when he wants to be. He’d filled the time during the walk from her house to the beach telling her about how the test kitchen had been (nothing particularly exciting to report) and how he’d stopped at the little farmer’s stand off the highway to pick up peaches. 

But now there’s only the heavy things left to say and only the sounds of the gentle waves rolling into the shoreline and seagulls cawing overhead fill the empty silence, waiting for one of them to utter the first word.

Claire figures Brad has said a lot in the last few hours, both in words and actions. It’s her turn to talk to him.

Finally.

She licks her lips and digs her heels into the sand, stopping their walk, hand slipping from the crook of his arm. He stops easily, stays in step and in sync with her. 

“Brad, I—I don’t even know where to start,” she laughed nervously, rubbing her hands over her upper arms. Admitting she was wrong and begging for forgiveness had always been hard for her, left a sour taste at the back of her throat. But Brad is worth swallowing down her pride. 

Brad steps forward, clumsily kicks a little sand over her shins, has to duck his head a little to hear her over the whip of the wind.”You don’t gotta say anything, Claire,” he tells her. “I know.”

She raises a skeptical eyebrow, looking at him unimpressed. “You know?,” she asks disbelievingly. Claire had hardly known what it was she she knew; she didn’t know how Brad knew. Oy, her head hurt.

Brad grins, nodding, slipping into their natural rhythm of bantering. “Oh yeah, you haven’t seen my updated CVC.”

“CV,” she corrects him automatically.

“Yeah, that’s what I said, Claire,” he says, like it’s routine. And, she supposes, with a wry grin, it _is_ routine. For the first time in a long time, Claire feels settled. This feels so right and natural and good with him, playfully bantering. 

“Uh huh,” she grins up at him. “What else is on this updated CV of yours?”

“Welllll,” he drags out, looking out over the water, looking quite pleased. “I updated my strengths section.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I figure it’s important for, uh, some people, to know that I’m incredibly patient and I’m getting better at time management and realizing when you need space to just think.” And then it feels like the world narrows down to just this moment, just this conversation, just _them._ His eyes flick back to hers, holding her gaze. The humor seems to dissipate from his voice and expression and she’s left standing at the center of his attention, complete and focused. 

The urge to shiver returns. 

“What else?,” she whispers. 

He licks his lips, reaches for her. His fingertips graze the curve of her elbow, just a little connection. “I’ve got some special skills that I think you can confirm are pretty noteworthy.” His eyes darken and she feels a thrill rush through her at the memory of his skills, the way his _skills_ had made her feel. 

“Sounds like quite a job you’re applying for,” she says, voice breathless and hopeful. When he cups her cheek gently, ever so delicately touching her, she almost cries out in relief. She turns into his touch, eyes fluttering closed, like a Pavlovian response: he touches her, she goes weak in the knees.

“I’m pretty hopeful I’ll get called in for a final interview. It’s been a pretty brutal interview process up until this point.”

Her eyes open at his words, can’t help the pain and regret that twists her features as she hears the hurt in his voice. Her hand covers his, keeps his palm flattened against her cheek, eyes wide and imploring.

“Brad, I’m so, so sor—“

But he swallows up her apology, absolves her with a single action, as he cups her face in both of his hands and tilts her mouth up to his, sliding his lips over hers. She half gasps and half sobs into the kiss, pushing up in the slippery sand to get herself closer to him. 

In the preceding weeks, she had thought she’d lost his forever, had thought this was actually something she _wanted_ —to never kiss him, never touch him, never love him like this. 

Kissing him makes her feel simultaneously dizzy and grounded and for the first time in almost a month she sinks back into him, letting him hold her, steady her. She wants this—him—always. The rest of the world can keep spinning and burning and throwing her curve balls as long as she has this. 

“Brad,” she moans, tilting her head back and giving him access to her neck, gasping as his hand rucks up her shirt and slides a warm, callused palm over the bare skin of her back. “I’m sorry,” she chants, hands knocking his hat off and threading through the strands of his hair, anchoring him to her. 

In her arms, against her, Brad is frantic and frenzied, pressing soft kisses up and down the column of her throat and beneath the underside of her jaw. She can just hear over the gusting wind the words he’s licking into her skin: _Missed you, love you, fuck, Claire, don’t go._

Her heart beats a rapid, painful staccato in her chest as she clutches him and brings his out back to hers, peppers kisses over his lips and chin and cheeks and nose and forehead.

Their touches ease into something soft and tender and a little less desperate and a little more reverent. She buries her face into his chest and wraps her arms around his waist, sighs happily when Brad presses a kiss to the top of her head and rests his chin on the crown of her head, content to just hold her.

He’s good— _too_ good—to simply forgive her like this, no questions asked. She owes him a few more words so she can sleep at night, so she can take his hand in hers and walk him back into the house— _their_ place—and start their lives again together. 

She kisses his heart where it beats through the thin fabric of his t-shirt beneath her ear and tilts her head up at him, arms still wrapped tightly around him. There’s no way she’s letting go of him any time soon. 

“I was wrong,” she tells him. “I thought that you—us—changing was one of the things that I could control and make go back to normal.” She shakes her head at her past self, wondering how she could have ever been so stupid as to assume she could live without him, assume they could have ever returned to how they were. 

“But it occurred to me on the drive up here, that we didn’t change. We just,” she struggled to find the words to describe what it was they did.

But Brad is there to step in. He teases her, “C’mon, Harvard, use that big vocabulary of yours. What are we?”

She slaps at his chest half-heartedly and murmurs, “Shut up, I’m trying to tell you something.”

He hooks a finger beneath her chin, lifts her face up to his. “Claire, I told you already, I _know._ You and me were pretty fuckin’ inevitable if you ask me. We just took a few detours along the way. But this is exactly where we were supposed to end up, okay?”

Tears sting her eyes and she lets out a low, long breath. “For a man who struggles to string a sentence together on camera, you’re pretty damn good with your words when you want to be.”

He beams, tightens his arms around her and lowers his mouth to hers, murmuring against her mouth, “Only for you, Claire.”

Standing in the middle of the Cape Cod shoreline, shifting sands beneath her feet and a shifting future ahead of her, Claire Saffitz leans into the steady, sure frame of Brad Leone and closes her eyes, safe in the knowledge that no matter what happens, he will be there holding her up.

Always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, that's it folks! thank you for sticking with me on this wild ride. i already have a few new ideas to work on (soulmate au! hallmark-y chick flick au!) and am excited to share those with you soon. hope you're all staying safe and sane in these crazy times and just thank you again for sticking it out til the end of this story (and amidst a huge writer's block towards the end!) you guys are the best.
> 
> (and special shoutout to my trash chat girls, badtemperedchocolate and 40millionyears. you guys are my best and favoritest cheerleaders and the fact that this story was lovingly and gently encourage to its finish it all attributable to you)


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